Summer

Summer's eye trolls the heavens like a cyclops,

merciless, singeing everything in sight.

The grass is yellow, brown, and dead

at half-past June.

The water tower is dangerously low,

and the firefighters have already exhausted 

their seasonal budget.

The adults wear grave faces.

The farmers worry about the hay.

But the berries are ripening early,

the tomatoes are delicious and the corn is sweet.

The horses in the pasture nibble

at dried up clumps of weed,

and seek shade at midday.

But the children laugh and play

in the yard in their plastic pools

as children have through all the summers

of my life.

And sometimes, early mornings,

the air smells as it did when I was a child,

and I am taken back

through all the years

to lake-scent and weeping willow,

sweet pea and mimosa,

me sunk in a book

in my Grandma's Big Brown Chair,

with every passing adult saying:

"What are you doing with your nose in a book

on a day like this? Get out in the sun!"

That sun I hide from now,

that sun that burns.