be joyful, though you have considered all the facts

I am a Midwestern gal. When I go walking on a late summer day with a teasing breeze, my fingertips open and close every so slightly around imaginary corn silks. I love dirt, earth wedged underneath my fingernails, and dew in the morning, drenching my bare feet as I hang up laundry in the backyard, and overgenerous spring rains that fill the bowls of all the intersections, and the towering foreheads of thunderclouds after three on July afternoons, and October trees heavy with apples and dimpled pears, and the first and last vees of geese in November and March. I love the way the air turns suddenly sharp at the beginning of December, pricking the eyes and ears and nose. Maybe I love lilacs and purple coneflowers and bruising morning thunderstorms most of all. Today was a sunless wind-tossed day and I regretted my flared skirt, but I loved today, too.

But there are a lot of things to love in this world.

Loren Zemlicka on Flickr