Hazy Summer Morning
hazy summer morning
the slow walk of the cow
along the fence
Poems on the topic: summer
Poems on the topic “summer” on Poets.by.
Hymns of the Morning
Early on summer days
I'd wake to my Dad's wedding band
clicking on the ivory keys.
His hymns would nudge me awake off the living room couch;
my camp site when AC was a luxury we still ignored as a family.
There was often no sheet music, no scrawled chord progressions guiding him,
just his hands knowing; finding the keys that agreed without looking.
At the time, it might as well have been
an alarm clock prelude to my chores, the signal that a break
from school could still be spoiled slapping paint on the peeling
exterior of our house as some lesson of work.
But now, I'd speak of this less harsh bugle call fondly.
I'd construct it into conversation so it appeared that
Of Country Folk in August
Whenever we worked at the creekside shed
there was always something else to do
such times as we were stumped, or nails ran short,
or the sun reached round the fir and baked us down
from raftering, roofing, or the like. We leaned,
gossip-like, against the fresh framing
of the walls, sipping solar tea,
watching the edge of a cloud's long skirt
chase the neighbors' horses leisurely
across their pasture, down the camas swale
and up the other side, against the black contrast
of maple-shrouded hills. The horses liked
to amble up to our corner, stand and watch.
We couldn't cure them of the shies,
though we might try with handfuls
of our green grass, or a few choice
Summer Is a Second Season
April is gone,
Summer is a second season,
The landscape is now;
There is no reason
For past or future thinking,
The plow lies in the shed,
And the land is dead
To all motion save the slow
Brilliant blossoming of summer.
Only later will the furrowed brow
Perceive the seasons' separations
And remember and understand
Harsh imprint of spring.
Then a scarecrow will look down
Longingly on creation
And with snowfall, fall
Eight
I lived two years
in mountain mist.
No one came to visit
the abandoned quarry.
I fished every day,
and short summer's
sun seemed brighter
than ever it did
in town.
The Medal
You arrived like an odd insect
That, upon extending its wings,
Belongs to all yet to no one in particular.
The grapevine beetle knows
That its time was summer and locusts,
And that before that sweltering heat and that music
Life is a bale of hay, darkness, and a thin membrane.
It recognizes a purple shell wherein
The female, quietly lurking,
Yearns to be fire and fruit.
That summer of nineteen hundred and something,
I withstood the calumny of my life
Like an emblem of molten silver,
Without shade, but rich in fruit so sweet
That milk and honey were nothing.
Milk, honey, streams
The Ride, The Badge
Tonight my memory is
a palomino exuberantly hooved
in an alpine meadow.
I ride the palomino bareback
and fall off, replacing air
in lungs with fear,
pushing fear out and breathing
again. I hold out
a sugar-cube on a flat palm
for my memory,
which nuzzles with a soft
gray mouth, nips
the cube, leaves lovely
equine slobber. The tail flicks out
at a fat fly, makes broom sounds.
Sunlight, the old sheriff, jumps
The Passing of Summer
An empty cup whence the light of passion is drunk !-
To-day a sad rumour passes through the trees,
A chill wind is borne by the stream,
The waves shiver in pain ;
Where now the cicada's song long and hot ?
Miss Loo
When thin-strewn memory I look through,
I see most clearly poor Miss Loo,
Her tabby cat, her cage of birds,
Her nose, her hair--her muffled words,
And how she'd open her green eyes,
As if in some immense surprise,
Whenever as we sat at tea
She made some small remark to me.
It's always drowsy summer when
From out the past she comes again;
The westering sunshine in a pool
Floats in her parlour still and cool;
While the slim bird its lean wires shakes,
As into piercing song it breaks;
Till Peter's pale-green eyes ajar
Dream, wake; wake, dream, in one brief bar.
Summer Night, Riverside
In the wild soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us
While your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled my hair. . . .
The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.
And now, far off
In the fragrant darkness
The tree is tremulous again with bloom
Open Windows
Out of the window a sea of green trees
Lift their soft boughs like the arms of a dancer,
They beckon and call me, "Come out in the sun!"
But I cannot answer.
I am alone with Weakness and Pain,
Sick abed and June is going,
I cannot keep her, she hurries by
With the silver-green of her garments blowing.
Men and women pass in the street
Glad of the shining sapphire weather,
But we know more of it than they,
Pain and I together.
They are the runners in the sun,
Breathless and blinded by the race,
But we are watchers in the shade
Who speak with Wonder face to face.
Never Again
Never again the music blown as brightly
Off of my heart as foam blown off a wave;
Never again the melody that lightly
Caressed my grief and healed the wounds it gave.
Never again--I hear my dark thoughts clashing
Sullen and blind as waves that beat a wall--
Age that is coming, summer that is going,
All I have lost or never found at all.
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