96poems/summer

Summer comes,
I rely on the clear glass
plates,
censoring myself as I reach
for stone ware.
I pick the first tomato
and eat it for lunch.

Ants crawl about on the
counter,
swarm from their homes
carrying eggs,
when I water the yard.

I scrub down the lounge chairs
at last,
and shop for sarongs.

Heat. Growth.

5:55 p.m. Summer Solstice,
I await his arrival
like a dinner date,
braless,
dancing.

Sun high in the sky,
I shift the prism
to catch its light
and sit in a dome of
dancing rainbows.

I read the heated words
of other summers.
This is the day I have learned
to take joy from my own
perception,
watching the gathering
bubbles as the honey
drips from the spoon.
I tilt my desk chair back
and let my ceiling entertain me,
a shimmer of iridescent blue
slips down between
paper and pen.

Well, indeed,
summer at last.
I hadn’t known, in fact,
that I was waiting –
have dreaded
your return,
your ants, your heat,
your demanding haste.
But that was back before
I knew
what to do in summer.
I have made a list:
watch the clouds drift past.

June is always a special month,
potato salad and cole slaw.

Summer, the season of deaths
and burials,
trips home,
rides down the roads
where no one knows me.

Wasps.

There were words,
like languid
and sultry,
which I was too young for
but not now,
no longer.

I am ripe,
woman enough
for any summer
season.

Summer teaches us
to taste,
to know the pleasures
of our tongue.

mango guava papaya
honey dew gala

black berry boysenberry
strawberry

Summer gives us color
back,
pleasures and satisfactions
which exact a price.

6/19/96