Summer Nights and Days
So far the nights feel lonelier than the days. In light, the living keep me company, and memories of voices through the years. Each summer threads a green familiar maze. Emerging sun-struck, you can barely spy the slow kaleidoscope of clouds and hours. Those flannel nightshirts chilly sleepers wear as summer wanes: I'm giving them away. Pass it on: you keep at the same time. A bough has broken from the Duchess tree. Rain swelled the apples. Too much lightness weighs heavy: the heft of the idea of home tempered with the detachment of a dream, or tidal pulls, like ocean, like moonrise.
Credit
Copyright © 2012 by Rachel Hadas. Used with permission of the author.
Author
Rachel Hadas

Born on November 8, 1948, Rachel Hadas is the author of numerous books of poetry, essays, and translations, including Halfway Down the Hall: New & Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1998), which was a finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.
Date Published: 2012-07-13
Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/summer-nights-and-days