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I think of August as a field of back-lit hay, as faded cornflowers and delphiniums swaying in the wind and giving up their last petals. It is a month of exhaustion. The dogs are tired. The flowers are tired. The people too are tired, and I think they go to Echo Lake to take a long nap. This wonderfully bleak sign hangs next to a while-you-wait denture office just south of the tattoo parlor and north of the Drift On Inn, where you can play poker with the last of your IRA or have the lettuce and a pickle lunch special on Thursdays. Why not do both, especially if you are on a fixed income.

Exactly what do these strange puzzle pieces indicate? Is that a cluster of houses on the upper right? Where is the Lake? Perhaps the whole point is to let my imagination improve on the situation. Perhaps better that I don't know the lake is behind the Costco, that just before putting on your goggles and diving under you can hear cars gunning at the discount gas and people fighting each other for a parking place, that you're never sure if that is a beer can or a woman's shoe glinting underwater. 

As I took this photo wind chimes knocked together in the afternoon heat. Tucked into a broken downspout a bouquet of weeds tied in faded ribbon thanked me for stopping by.