Wind Chimes

Wind chimes...I often think of those days. They're like a dream. Not a bad dream, a good one, a peaceful one, one where hardly anything ever seems to go wrong or feel rotten. If I go back far enough, concentrate hard enough, close my eyes and try as I listen to those same wind chimes...then I can smell the dirt, the trees, and the freshly cut grass. I can feel the soft summer wind on my hot skin. I can watch the long summer days fade by slowly. They were happy ones.

Forts, water, acorns and mud pies were the most I usually did. Long hikes over our land, or sitting in a tree writing poetry, or building "forts" out of broken branches, and picnics under the cool shade of a maple tree...they're all good memories. When barbed wire fences, and chokecherries were a fact of life. When chicken plucking was a normal summer activity. Wasps were an inevitable evil...but they announced the arrival of summer. Swings, slip-n-slides, and sprinklers to run through were always available...

Those were good days...it's nice to remember them!