MARGARET GIBSON

Summer

Inside summer
there’s an Anglo-Saxon at the mind forge
hammering out a trochee
for tree crickets and heat.
Inside summer
I lie down in the grass and listen
as wind swells,
a chorus of summer
words rising to the tip of my tongue—
honeysuckle, crabgrass, daylily,
plum. Inside summer
there’s honey and evanescence
in equal measure, a ripe
clatter of syllables, then a space
culled and quiet.
Inside summer, summer lulls me—
then I remember
and the spell breaks.
I sit up and stare at the chestnut tree
arched over
our border garden of phlox and summer lilies.
Unfair summer, unjust—
to be so full,
to be garner and gather—while you,
my beloved, grow daily more quiet, your mind
a summer sky
seen by one floating face-up in the pond,
sky distantly brilliant
absolute
and so still—

one holds one’s breath, as if startled—as if chilled.