On a Strawberry Moon

Summer is here.  Officially.  I missed the first day, the longest day, though I now know it was catastrophic for me.  It is noted.  But now the long days hold on well into the evening, deep blues and purples refusing to yield.  I went out last night alone for dinner, wishing to avoid the usual places, sitting outside at a sidewalk table eating barbecue and drinking beer and watching the parade of beauties and hipsters stroll by, me sitting inside my aura of aloneness.

After dinner I, too, strolled, though I imagine it more a stuttering limp than the smooth, confident gliding I'd been observing from my table.  And on an oak-lined street of bistros, I came to what had been a coffee house but which has been transformed into a cute garden cafe.  I stopped on the sidewalk for a moment to listen to a duet, a youngish fellow playing folksy jazz chords on a classical guitar and an (ahem) older gent playing violin.  After a long bridge, the younger fellow began to sing unobtrusively, the other man giving very subtle and musically clever harmonies.  Oh, they were good and I decided to stay and have a Bellini.  I wouldn't have thought of it myself, but the chalkboard out front suggested it and it seemed the perfect drink for the time of evening.

I stayed longish.  Lingered.  Solitary in that most beautifully dark light.  There is such a youthful charm to a Bellini, so full of eager enthusiasm on a pretty summer night whose air is filled with soft music and light.

I won't miss the full moon.  It is tonight, the first of the summer.  The Strawberry Moon.  I think I know where I shall go tonight to toast the summer and the moon and me.  We shall make a handsome trio for a brief while.  Perhaps I will drink just a bit too much.  Just enough too much.  And I will wish for the Vespa I have not bought, a pale, rich yellow with a tan leather seat.

Now that I have suggested it, you try, too.  The Bellini, I mean.  And even the Vespa, if you can.  It will mark you, and me, too, such a wonderful fiction, an infinite moment, a lovely escape on a summer full moon.