Suddenly,
there’s nothing to do
and too much—
the lawn, paths, woods
were never so green
white blossoms of every
size and shape—hydrangea,
Chinese dogwood, mock orange
spill their glistening—

Inside, your photographs
and books stand guard
in orderly array. Your
half of the bed is smooth,
the pillows plump, the phone
just out of reach beyond it.

No one calls early—they
remember your late hours.
The shades are down, so
sunlight’s held at bay
though not the fabulous winged
song of summer birds
waking me as ever, always in our
favorite room, our season.
Yesterday’s mail on the desk
newspaper, unread. Plans for the day
hover bright out all our doors—

Don’t think of evening.

On the first full day of summer the sun is up
the sky as far as it will get and now it will
head south to warm the Antipodes, where today
it rains and gales blow up from the Antarctic.

Here it is summer already, the lawn mowed, garden
weeded and nostalgia for summers past makes her
way into this place. The years of WWII bunkers
on South Beach and the tar coating our feet from 

the boats out there and green-eyed Billy, now gone to
fat and trouble, trying to pull me through his bedroom
window. Now, Lily Briscoe paints the lighthouse again,
and my cousins across the yard. And the others, all

of them. Grown middle-aged ... or dead or sick and
their children, for Christ’s sake,  all grown up.
We were something. The great bonfire on the beach
and sex in the dunes with someone I would

never see or taste again, and hanging on each
other before the fire. The other years: crossing
the Tyrrhenian Sea in a summer storm, fearing
the boat will sink because they have, they do.

Below decks everyone pukes and prays to Dio,
Deo, Allah, so I go above and lash my sleeping
bag to the deck rail and wedged between 
the bulkhead and two steel rods, I sleep. Nothing

between me and the wild ocean but a clothesline
rope. And awake as we chug into Brindisi, all
of us repeating grazie, grazie as we disembark to live
another summer. Now, all these years on, we

see another summer coming, relentless in
its blooms and breeze and thunder rolling up
the valley and apple blossoms strewn like snow
flakes on the ground.

When summer time has come, and all
The world is in the magic thrall
Of perfumed airs that lull each sense
To fits of drowsy indolence;
When skies are deepest blue above,
And flow'rs aflush,—then most I love
To start, while early dews are damp,
And wend my way in woodland tramp
Where forests rustle, tree on tree,
And sing their silent songs to me;
Where pathways meet and pathways part,—
To walk with Nature heart by heart,
Till wearied out at last I lie
Where some sweet stream steals singing by
A mossy bank; where violets vie
In color with the summer sky,—
Or take my rod and line and hook,
And wander to some darkling brook,
Where all day long the willows dream,
And idly droop to kiss the stream,
And there to loll from morn till night—
Unheeding nibble, run, or bite—
Just for the joy of being there
And drinking in the summer air,
The summer sounds, and summer sights,
That set a restless mind to rights
When grief and pain and raging doubt
Of men and creeds have worn it out;
The birds' song and the water's drone,
The humming bee's low monotone,
The murmur of the passing breeze,
And all the sounds akin to these,
That make a man in summer time
Feel only fit for rest and rhyme.
Joy springs all radiant in my breast;
Though pauper poor, than king more blest,
The tide beats in my soul so strong
That happiness breaks forth in song,
And rings aloud the welkin blue
With all the songs I ever knew.
O time of rapture! time of song!
How swiftly glide thy days along
Adown the current of the years,
Above the rocks of grief and tears!
'Tis wealth enough of joy for me
In summer time to simply be.

How again today our patron star
whose ancient vista is the long view

turns its wide brightness now and here:
Below, we loll outdoors, sing & make fire.

We build no henge
but after our swim, linger

by the pond. Dapples flicker
pine trunks by the water.

Buzz & hum & wing & song combine.
Light builds a monument to its passing.

Frogs content themselves in bullish chirps,
hoopskirt blossoms

on thimbleberries fall, peeper toads
hop, lazy—

            Apex. The throaty world sings ripen.
Our grove slips past the sun’s long kiss.

We dress.
We head home in other starlight. 

Our earthly time is sweetening from this.