‘Songs of Summer’ from “White Cranes of Heaven”

( Painting: American Eagle, Jane Kohut-Bartels, watercolor, 2006, large painting)

We are in the middle of Summer here in the South.  The weather has been kind, but the season comes back with a fierce determination not to be forgotten. With amazingly mild temps for months, now we get 90 degrees for the past few days. But this isn’t bad, because we can see Autumn peeking over the edge: the nights aren’t sultry and the mornings can be rather cool.  But it is still Summer, and the middle of August.  All in all, this has been a kind season so far.  The incrediible rains for the past months have greatly helped.

I will continue on with the next part of “The Nightingale’s Song” tomorrow or so. Some revision called for.

Lady Nyo

SONGS OF SUMMER

Summer cartwheels through the sky!

The fertility of months

Expressed from field to orchard,

Above in the sky, and deep below,

Where the earth gathers energy

And 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 tender-est  of slaughter

Coated in white curls,

The smell of lanolin strong 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 the 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 noise of colliding clouds,

The cymbals of fierce light,

The plaint of cows with full udders,

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,

The quiet sighing of

An unexpected wind-

A welcome benediction

to this  summer day.

– 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2012 ,2013, “White Cranes of Heaven”, Fifty Seasonal Poems, Lulu.com 2011