Member-only story
SUMMER TIME
a hot, still July afternoon
silence unbroken.
through a cordon of dusty nettles
you plunge into a rank glade,
wicked with the scent of elder
and warm, ripe grass
heavy with anticipation of something not quite definable
it is high summer, just on the turn
as the last red campion falls to usurping rosebay
and autumn, though still distant,
slips into consciousness in the early yellowed leaf.
light fails noticeably earlier now
and as the stars fade in
and glowing planets begin their slow circling of the sky,
anticipation is irrelevant: at the moonrise hour
the memory goes back, instead,
down the long, long years.
seconds, minutes, hours, days,
weeks, months, seasons, years —
how could the waxing and waning, rising and setting
moon
have tricked you? led you so gently
and seductively down the riverbank of time,
waltzed you down the dear time of your kife,
brought you with a bump
to the wasteland of the present.
