Summer

Suddenly
it is full summer.

I open doors and windows 

to the morning chill

filling the rooms

with cool air,

as my mother and grandmother

did before me, 

against the impending

heat of the afternoon.

The birds are ecstatic,

the air alive with their mingled song,

their little chests puffed,

warbling so energetically 

they are almost falling off

their branches

with delight.

Summer,

season of lake scent 

and willow

on the air,

canvas hammocks,

and wet bathing suits on the line.

Once I swam during an afternoon storm,

gray lowering clouds,

thunder rumbling,

a metallic odor

that was the

edge of storm,

the lake, the hills 

all mine.

I remember it, still,

the gunmetal gray

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 day,

how to live.