Waiting Summer - A Poem

I've been determinedly reading through the Oxford Book of American Verse - a long project, and one I've questioned as the poets seem to become increasingly disillusioned and corrupt as one advances chronologically through the pages, but it also portrays a mental history of our nation that is enlightening. There are gems in those pages, and also glimpses of hell. When I finished the section of Hart Crane's poems (highly non-recommended) this morning, I felt inspired to write a fresh poem to lift my spirits and remind me that the world is beautiful and good under God. This one is about the hope that summer reflects to me.

Waiting Summer

Green this heavy
I only dreamed,

When east wind rattled the crying twigs

pleading the chill white sky -

How long?

'Til the red life blood of spring

Will make us live,
and robe us with a

weight of glory?

I scarcely dreamed

when the first gold shone

on the waking boughs.

That now was the

beginning of

It won’t be long.

Till the gray wind whistling forest

exhales its sweeter song

Gray skeletons enfleshed

With emerald glory spreading forth

A welcome to the sky

It is so bright,

Above this deep and rustling shade -

a shadow newly sweet

Did we dream of this?

This richness, hotness

of fresh life,

This huge and swaying splendor?

We dreamt and dream again,

That when the last gold splendor fades

and red life falls to the scuttling ground

It will not be the end.

I dream of the green buds’ push

And the cold earth’s groan

That will be the last push

of the last groan

That births the glory home

Summer beyond summer,

Life beyond life-

Joy this heavy

You’ve never dreamed

When the bright King’s sight

Shatters the sighing dust

With the blaze of light,

And bare souls blossom with burnished flesh

Then all the trees of the field

Shall clap their hands

While you go out with

Joy.

- AFB, 2019