Joyfully spring from the last breaths of summer and gracefully fall
summer
A dash of heat
All other seasons in Phoenix are just hyphenated summers:
Monsoon love
for the harsh heat wave
wet apologetic gift
from clouds to tree roots
When you were a child
When you were a child, on a summer afternoon,
Did you lie in tall grass, listening to the crickets
Foreshadowing autumn, listening to the small
Infinite sounds of earth? Did you press your cheek
And your short brown body furiously down
Into the grass, so loving the narrow roots,
So loving the hard wild flanks of hills, and summer,
That when your slight strength broke at last, you cried…
Then rising in the slow wind, cried no more
But stood and gazed with grave young eyes upon
The brief, unburdened hours lived and gone,
Yourself, the child, abandoned in the grass,
Yourself, the man, earth’s lover, who would follow
The strong years deathward, aching and possessed?
—Frances Frost, “Year of Earth,” These Acres, 1932
Tilted
Earth tilts toward Winter
my heart goes tilty too
the summer-fever cools
to a more reflective hue
Seamless
the vibrant green-yellow-pink blossom-life of spring
the watery-blue radiant sunshine-breath of summer
the metallic-earth-toned glowing-decay of autumn
the grey-white holly-festive slow-motion of winter
Spring’s sure well-done over, at 100°
Poetic words flow much better in pleasant climes—
Springtime and autumn, more friendly for rhymes
Winter’s good too, we self-reflect well in cold times
But blazing summer melts words & numbs minds!
June — boom!
In Phoenix, summer is a heat bomb that explodes in late June.
Aegrotum sanare
Autumn is the antidote to stifling summer.