Poem in July

I felt perfected along the rectangle 
By its ragged side

Fences trees and mist dropping
Some space for the flowers

I set an image in my head where
Bushes in their out of focus

Made a green dearth about the door
I wanted to do a book on

Pages left in the heat or rain
But my desire seemingly disappeared

Picked up by a car in the middle of
A pack of cigarettes

This trip into the forest
The trees trading with memory to

Frame the various breaks
The pleasures of small laws cut

Behind the mower with my eyes
Running the grass blades

We don’t really get any older
I can see what that means
 

Credit

Copyright © 2016 by Samuel Amadon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 29, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“We have a really terrific screen porch on the back of our house in South Carolina, and when the summer gets ridiculous, I sometimes go sit in the heat for longer than I should. It feels like being underwater, but protected, like in a shark cage. I wrote this poem out of that feeling.”
—Samuel Amadon