“Songs of Summer”, from “White Cranes of Heaven”,

Giant English Hollyhock

–

SONGS OF SUMMER

 –

Summer cartwheels through the sky!

The fertility of months

Shines from field to orchard,

Above  and deep below,

Where earth gathers green energy

 transforms by magic

Fruits for the mouth and eye.

 –

Fledglings tipped out of nests

Try new-feathered wings on warm currents,

Calves butt heads and race in calf-tumble

Climbing rocks and playing king-of-the-hill,

Spring lambs past the date

For the tenderest of slaughter

Coated in white curls,

Smell of lanolin sweet in their wake.

 –

There is fresh life in the pastures,

Now with steady legs and bawling lungs,

They graze upon the bounty

And grow fat for  future culling.

–

Tender shoots of wheat and corn,

Waist-high, defying devious crows,

Paint once-fallow fields in saffron and

A multitude of hues-

Golden tassels forming,

Waving under an oppressive sun,

And when the sky bursts open

In random welcomed rain,

Heaven meets Earth-

The cycle complete.

 –

These are the songs of Summer:

The bleat of lambs,

The cymbals of colliding clouds,

The plaints of cows with udders tight,

The loud quarrelling of a swollen brook,

The scream of a hunting hawk

Calling for its mate,

The pelt of an unheralded storm

Upon a tin roof,

And the quiet sighing of

An unexpected wind-

A benediction to the day.

—

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2011-2015

Tags: "Songs of Summer", "White Cranes of Heaven", lulu.com, poetry