Personifications of Summer

I.-Worn Wind

The wind, or breeze, soft
like scarves feathering upward
past your shoulders, brushing your neck,
getting lost among the curves of your hair,
feeling out of place and losing hope
then flying out on a draft past your cheek;
we, or I, think it might have fallen in love with you
or died of embarrassment.

II.-Sunlight in Trees

Suddenly human, losing its place amongst the trees
sunlight filters downward like a deep-sea diver
who fell in an ocean of air—lose your place
find a way out of whatever holds you—
Sunlight looks lost for a minute, remembers
the source of its birth: great mother, planetary mass
emitting light itself, holy, infinite;
small as a button compared to the universe.

As the trees lining the pavement blur
and twist, no elegance of movement
here, just sunlight curling about the shaded green
flowing out under your mother’s ordered kitchen, scattered
by the porcelain of a tea set, churned
by the slow, ever-growing rotation
of a ceiling fan. How the potted geraniums
must laugh at this. Rustling on a windless day, watching
as sunlight has a nervous breakdown
right in front of your yard and kitchen.
It might have missed its mother or maybe—
it might have missed being here, with you.  

III.-An Unused Room

Here are my hands, my knees,
says the room down the hall.
Never used except for storage,
I have found my place here
amongst the wilds, amongst the untamed
the flighty pansies that dot the garden rows,
the hard-eyed sunflowers with their enormous stare.
My role is to be empty, to be clear
of all earthly desires, of all human afflictions,
no preconceptions, no biased assumptions.
I am an empty room, where no one has loved
or un-loved in. I am a clean slate.
An empty jar.

If you walk in with a potted flower
the walls and floors creak breathlessly
(perhaps out of joy—relief).

IV.-Traffic

There is no other way
except to patiently empty
into one lane and then the other.
After a few added insults, after several
botched sets of battering, I grow tired, upset.
My engine exhaust huffs and puffs like an overgrown wolf.
You remember reading this story to your daughter or son, right?
On the car seat, they threw up
and churned themselves to a horrible frenzy
tears, moans, or worse
the silent cry.

That’s when you know something is wrong, right?
When they are crying—however…
tearlessly, soundlessly
nothing but the immense pain
the silent expression.

That’s me. But you wouldn’t know that
if you didn’t hear it yourself.

V.-Sky

The open skyline rushes out.
This enormous inkblot has torn through our world,
devastating it with beauty.
What an enormous mistake to make!
A bouquet of irises and hydrangeas
dotted with acres of gypsophila.
Where does this vast field of blue come from? From you?
Hazy, mother-clad, flat as a sheet of music,
Torpid, gray-faced, flushed down piece of toilet paper,
Glass, smooth-swept, hard as a jeweler’s display case,
Summer World, White World, Wind After Rain World.

Telephone poles sequin the broad shoulders
that round out the edge of the horizon.
When you look past the sunset, slowly
you can see the moon lowered down from heaven
and the sky as it sings pink-blue with light.
If you are anything, you are
a frozen dream, falling through the washed air
like sakura stained with blue. Plum Song, Snow Dance
Autumn Wind and Fall Dance. Stratosphere
in bloom, gaseous combustion in bloom,
light and color
and sound and motion

blossom,
blossom,
blossom.