Josephine W.Johnson

 

Josephine Johnson is the Pulitzer-winning author of Now in November and The Dark Traveler. Some of her other books include Winter Orchard, Year's End, and Wildwood.

On summer mornings up there, the far hills are blue, the air is warm and misty and full of white and yellow butterflies appearing and dissolving like bits of cloud. The glowing orange fritillaries, whose larvae eat the wild-violet leaves at night, and whose wings have mica spangles, swarm over the dusty pink and purple milkweed flowers. The Inland Island, 1969

 

Gold bugs, yellow butterflies, orange lilies. What to do with this great fragrant glow? Well, hold on to it. You'll want it in the days to come. Ibid.

 

Old people who live too long come to resemble turtles. As though time turned in a curve, and down they go to the reptiles again. Not the little wet naked frog they were born. But the tortoise. Cold eyes, sagging circles of skin, the nose becomes beak. The shell of sleep. Ibid.

 

Now is the season of the autumn browns. The prickly buckeye bursts and splashes open. Bright shining nuts, like shining eyes of deer. Like polished jewels, the fall among the polished leaves. Bright brown, leaf brown, quail, woodchuck, chipmunk brown. Ibid.

 

As the summer, which is the day of the insect world, draws down to night, there is a vast moving to and fro, nervous waves of flying and gathering, interruptions in the old furious pattern of eating and being eaten. Ibid.