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Lemmonaid

 When she said,
"Today I am going to tidy up the house, and sew some things!",
I knew I would have to help tidy the house
and the back yard
and the windows
and the garage,
and that called for a major alternative:

"While you are tidying and sewing
and doing all the things that ought to be done,"
I replied,
"I think I will escape this heat and this playpen
our grandson has created around us
and drive up to Mt. Lemmon."

And that, of course, is how we came to our senses together.

Mt. Lemmon is 9,000 feet high,
and even in the Sonoran Desert,
if you stand almost two miles tall
there will be tall trees and cool winds,
almost to the point of wishing
you had brought a thick jacket.

Reaching back thirty years,
since when we had lived here
while collecting academic software,


we had occasionally
driven to Mt. Lemmon,
sometimes even when
there was snow
on the ground,
for the cool breeze and a bowl
of chili at The Iron Door;


once even, when the snow was gone,
as it usually is, taking the lift
just for the sheer, wonderful absurdity of it.

The sheer wonderful absurdity of it still holds,
and people still take the lift
when the grass is as green as the trees.

The sewing is still undone
and the toys are bunched, but unruly,
and after our outing up there,
shirt-sleeve cold up among the condors and the crows,
the Sonora is lovely, throbbing warm around us.

There were no condors, of course:  they aren't there.
But there were memories, all around,
and a new one settled down easily.

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