Summer

In childhood,

it was always summer:

the slap of the hose on the side of the house

waking me as Grandma 

hosed down the garden

against the heat of the day.

Then she pulled down the canvas awnings

like sleepy eyelids

over the two front windows,

the cottage a bright bird,

settling down for a mid-morning snooze.

Summer,

season of lake-scent and weeping willow,

sweet pea and pinks in my grandmother's garden,

pungent in the falling dusk.

Summer,

sleepy hours reading in a canvas hammock,

and wet bathing suits on the line.

Once I swam alone during an afternoon storm,

grey lowering clouds, thunder rumbling,

a metallic odor, danger-edged,

the waves, the lake, the hills,  

all mine.

I remember it, still, the gunmetal grey

of that long-gone summer afternoon,

in the years when summer was

my grandma's house:

her steady, serene, domestic presence,

her company, her chortling,

the comfort of the bulk of her

as she showed me,

day by slow-paced summer day,

how to live.

for grapeling's prompt at Real Toads: Summertime