This Summer Day

Published by Family Friend Poems June 2020 with permission of the Author.

That sprinkler is at it again,
hissing and spitting its arc
of silver, and the parched
lawn is tickled green. The air
hums with the busy traffic
of butterflies and bees,
who navigate without lane
markers, stop signs, directional
signals. One of my friends
says we’re now in the shady
side of the garden, having moved
past pollination, fruition,
and all that bee-buzzed jazz,
into our autumn days. But I say wait.
It’s still summer, and the breeze is full
of sweetness spilled from a million petals;
it wraps around your arms, lifts the hair
from the back of your neck.
The salvia, coreopsis, roses
have set the borders on fire,
and the peaches waiting to be picked
are heavy with juice. We are still ripening
into our bodies, still in the act of becoming.
Rejoice in the day’s long sugar.
Praise that big fat tomato of a sun.

Published in Small Rain (Purple Flag Press, 2014).

ABOUT THE POET:

Monet famously said that gardening and painting were the only things he knew how to do; change that to gardening and writing, and that describes Barbara Crooker. Barbara Crooker is a poetry editor for Italian-Americana, and author of twelve chapbooks and nine full-length books of poetry. Some Glad Morning, Pitt Poetry Series,...

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