Shifting Plates of Time

The ground rumbles, ominously, I'm on the steep side of a Mississippi River Bluff, mid-August, gathering bursting crimson red trophies of Staghorn Sumac for my favorite sumac-ade, a spright, invigorating tonic I enjoy this time of year. The smell in the air, forest-sage beginning to dry and ripen, the bitter tang of scattered paper-birch bark chimneys...must keep alert for the origins of the earthly rumble. The unsettled earth, sweet and bitter smells...mix with my age and I sit down as if in a trance and drift asleep...harkening back to my training as a young man in a Manhattan Bagel Deli, assembling prep-stations for the customer onslaught about to descend. Proofed bagel dough, seeded and rotating in the elevator slate-shelved oven after a frothy malt-bath in the bubbling giant kettle, delectable aromas of fairly vibrating paper-sliced spiced meats and piquant aged cheeses, briny sheets of smoked lox, pots of sweetly acidic capers and luminous heirloom tomatoes... But I'm much older now, my mind remembers, but my body can't function like it once did, I can't perform the once-easy configurations effortlessly like before. The rumbling, just my imagination... I awaken, gather my bunch of fluorescent sumac, which I am still able to concoct, mindful of God's Grace in my spiritual and physical evolution...He Has Blessed me with. 8-13-20 6:03 am