And June hurried in,
With the many assurances
of the cicada and her kin,
so that when the herring-skinned month
sang the same indulgent song
like every summer before,
We stayed waiting by the weary road
meeting Ourselves
on paths gone cool with remembering,
The ribbon of the familiar sky
wound sweet and knowing
behind the fading yews,
And like a dimpled mouth,
marked with atomic white,
the embittered air gave strange weight
To the winds of days gone,
so that while we sat on the mellowed dock
by that last reciting creek of ours,
The summer we’d been waiting for
Came—but not quite as we’d wish’d,
never four winds blowing even across the plain
And no sun-mocked boughs
writing poems on the reeds,
no final turn of eddying water,
No bruises of fields,
swelling coin-colored like clouds,
no June laid down to her bed of blue
Among the junipers
and the mourning stars
stymied by their sun-burden,
Near the creaking porch swing
that held our frames
with motherly hands,
Certainly still murmuring to itself
Finally lonesome;
In the last forgetful golden.
© C.S.G.