Summer

Inside summer

there’s an Anglo-Saxon at the mind forge

hammering out a trochee

for tree crickets and heat.

Inside summer

I lie down in the grass and listen

as wind swells,

a chorus of summer

words rising to the tip of my tongue—

honeysuckle, crabgrass, daylily,

plum. Inside summer

there’s honey and evanescence

in equal measure, a ripe

clatter of syllables, then a space

culled and quiet.

Inside summer, summer lulls me—

then I remember

and the spell breaks.

I sit up and stare at the chestnut tree

arched over

our border garden of phlox and summer lilies.

Unfair summer, unjust—

to be so full,

to be garner and gather—while you,

my beloved, grow daily more quiet, your mind

a summer sky

seen by one floating face-up in the pond,

sky distantly brilliant

absolute

and so still—

one holds one’s breath, as if startled—as if chilled.