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I chanced upon this beautiful creature while taking one of those unofficial shortcuts between houses and down some back alley stairs.  An unexpected final shot before I made my descent.

One day, I will move from this house in Somerville with its many windows.  I will no longer be able to climb its spiral staircase to the top floor and from there to peer out the old window at the towering oak.  I will no longer be able to train my camera up through that tree’s branches into the sky.  But that day has not yet come. So on this bright September morn, I am grateful for this window, this oak and the blue of the sky beyond.  Have a good day, folks.

… while walking along the Charles River Esplanade in Boston.

… when the squirrel stepped out.

just sparkling water in a clear glass

sitting a bit in the shadows

I passed by a pond of what I thought were all orange koi fish.  Then, out of the blue, I spied a white fish with gold accents.  A ghostly figure that I really wanted to capture amidst the reflections in the water.  Mostly unsuccessful … he kept dipping deeper into the water.  But what I caught, and what I remember, are magical to me.

We spoke by phone.  I sat in my kitchen in Somerville, MA while my younger brother sat outside his home in Lynchburg, VA.  After I had described my latest walk by the water and what I might write about, he said, “Mmmhmm.  I think you should write some more about porches.”

“Porches?”

“Yes.  About what it’s like to sit on the porch steps at night, in the quiet and in the cool, with fireflies in the distance.  They look like stars.”

I imagined him sitting on his little back porch.  I thought about the seeds I had sent him and his family.  “Next year, I am sending you night blooming flowers.”

“That’s fine,” he said, and then he added, “And you should write about wearing glasses, how we wear them to see clearly, these wire frames that are not heavy but somehow you feel their weight all the time, and…