Today was the kind of summer day that poems are written about. Cool breezes, dappled sunlight, slow morning at the breakfast table, talking over oatmeal and tea, snuggling with teenager chickens, drawing in the shade of a quince bush, quickly sketching my daughter as she worked on her computer, spending the late afternoon painting a still life, making a loaf of hearty whole wheat bread, and having breakfast for dinner. The parts that would get cut from the poem are waking with a painful back after another bad night’s sleep, too many bug bites to count, chicken poop, and stepping on a toad, not knowing if it was okay because it ran away too fast to mother it. :( I am sorry little toad.