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Tell me any color— sea lavender, limonium, marsh-rosemary— I tell you l believe in any memory come from water.

A sky full of foam, a fire burning down the hatchery, that’s the madness of July. Give me the herb, the everlasting calyx.

Dry me a bouquet and quiet the wind. Let night put out even the boldest blues, the most outrageous purples and dissolute creams.

over the city through evening clouds, and one by one lightning bugs

signal their luminous abdomens to the opposite sex. A hot wind

pumping humidity across the low hills, into the trembling leaves of cottonwood.

July: crabgrass setting plump seedheads, tomatoes bending under green loads,

a plains toad staking its cool claim under the dog's water dish.

Somewhere in this composed suburb a couple will switch off their reading lamps

and turn in the gathering dark to face each other. Out in a farmer's cornfield

heated leaves will gradually unfold, admitting their heavenly gifts.

John stands at the horizon: he wants both at once, he wants everything at once.

The extremes are easy. Only the middle is a puzzle. Midsummer- everything is possible.

Meaning: never again will life end.

How can I leave my husband standing in the garden dreaming this sort of thing, holding his rake, triumphantly preparing to announce this discovery

as the fire of the summer sun truly does stall being entirely contained by the burning maples at the garden's border.

Thistles open their velvety heads into the low light of a late northern evening. The hedges are wrapped in

wild roses and honeysuckle; blackberries' blooms wave over the footpaths. A single swift darts through the sun. Over the Western

horizon a strip of forget-me-not blue under a heavy rain-belt of clouds. Slanted sunbeams light the sheep

dotted, as if on canvas, over the inclined field in front, rain-bright green. My step falters.

This is the time to prepare, to find ways of making friends comfortable, without taking offence if they take more, or less than you offer.

Now is the time to prepare, to find ways of being comfortable with yourself.

Tonight the caustic wind, love, Gossips late and soon, And I wear the wry-faced pucker of The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum, Puny, green, and tart, Droops upon its wizened stem My lean, unripened heart.

Each storm subsiding in the gabled looking-glass spun like a bomb worth boasting about into unsuspected freedom.

Every dialect that danced on his tongue dissolved her internal dream of immortality with a kiss.

And part of the prayer was wearing a green branch like a tinge of sex. Riverside, near no road, it flecked and slotted, and felt the handle turned very softly from the other side.

And in the small orchard the trees still reach north— white under the winter moon as when, in summer, lightning lifts the whole night landscape —detailed, immaculate— into your lap, and then withdraws.

Unexpected gifts that liven the moments in our breathing days weighs heavily on me haunted "not free from the memory of others" Jogs the evening ceremony for you with lightning, thunder & rain, gusts of wind brings your card and our collaboration almost a year old.

of mid-summer before it begins with the hand on the small of the back swinging the child on the fresh cut plank hung from the maple, swish-ticking

through green tunnels of air. Sweep and utter, sweep and utter what’s now: it’s the mood, the hour, the light, the day, the night

the mother cannot hold back. Novitiates, the crickets are singing the present is the past is the present, the sum of our perpetual erasure,

dust kicked up by the heel lightly brushing the ground. The crickets’ singing is the gold rain of winged seed, a little rough,

a little sweet, is what she hears, the mother swinging in the body of the child riding the miles of the leaves, backwards and forwards

in the swell of mid-summer the moment before their faces are marked by leaf and light and an inkling of love and the origin of time.

and each floats and turns among the branches of the oaks and the swamp azaleas looking for another

as, who doesn’t? Oh, blessings on the intimacy inside fruition,

be it foxes or the fireflies or the dampness inside the petals of a thousand flowers.

Though Eden is lost its loveliness remains in the heart and the imagination;

he would take her in a boat over the dark water; she would take him

to an island she knows where the blue flag grows wild and the grass is deep, where the birds

perch together, feather to feather, on the bough. And the fireflies,

blinking their little lights, hurry toward one another. And the world continues, God willing.