Whenever I think of August, I think of old creaking porch swings, but not on porches, on verandas.  There is a wrinkled old man sipping iced tea or mint juleps or lemonade and he tells stories sometimes, but only if you stop and listen.  He whispers to himself all day, his brown hands fluttering.  There are road maps on his hands and face that show ghosts of labor and smiles and pain, and sometimes he'll tell you what they mean but not why, you have to figure out why for yourself, maybe the humming cicadas know.  At night the stars weave uncertainly down to the earth and children catch them in jars, and the old man watches and smiles.  But he warns the children to let the stars go, because otherwise they'll die, and then nobody else can see them.


Not that I spend my summers in the deep South or anything.  That's just what I feel like August is, or should be.