Evenings Full of Linnets' Wings

The kids and I spent the last week on the Katy trail along the Missouri River. They were on bikes, Daisy and I were in the car dawdling along enjoying ourselves and doing the feeding.

Our music of choice for our woodsy days was Claire Holley's salty Mississippi rendition of Innisfree and we drove from town to town singing along. We stopped at bakeries, at chocolate shops, at wonderful antique stores (nothing costs *anything* in southern Missouri, apparently!). We did massive leisurely grocery stock-ups for our sixteen hungry campers, and we enjoyed walking hand in hand down the cosy main streets of such beautiful turn-of-the-century river towns, with their ornate theatres and banks and dry goods stores.

But best of all was each night's rendezvous. We cooked and ate and did the dishes (Daisy's supreme joy: the three-dishpan system set up right at her level). I would go out for a walk down the trail for a mile or so, mesmerized by the endlessly disappearing white path, under a tunnel of trees, past honeysuckle and mimosa, and under a rising moon.

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.