I posted this 3 years ago and have been getting lots of Google hits for it lately. When I read the poem again it haunted me for days--as I suppose the end of summer will do in the echo of dry stalks and frozen aster blooms in a month or so.
Embers
Poor summer, it doesn't know it's dying.
A few days are all it has. Still, the lake
is with me, its strokes of blue-violet
and the fiery sun replacing loneliness.
I feel like an animal that has found a place.
This is my burrow, my nest, my attempt
to say, I exist. A rose can't shut itself
and be a bud again. It's a malady,
wanting it. On the shore, the moon sprinkles
light over everything, like a campfire,
and in the green-black night, the tall pines
hold their arms out as God held His arms
out to say that He was lonely and that
He was making Himself a man.
-- Henri Cole
9 comments:
A grueling one for many. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.......
Bring on fall! Too hot to handle this year!
I'm looking foward to fall, farewell, long, hot, mosquito infested summer...
Lovely poem!
Haunting poem, I wanted to say, then realized I was using the word you used. But it is.
Thankfully Summer is followed by the glorious season of Autumn to ease the pain of sadness.
Compost--Just muggy and hot here. Hardly stormy at all. Kind a weenie year weather wise in the Plains.
R--It was 100 one day, and then like 70 the next. Summer just went OFF.
K--I haven't seen a single skeeter all year. I've only seen married ones.
J--You can tell the poem was written in the moment of the seasonal transition because it is so haunting.
C--Autumn is too short! I don't care about spring, but fall could be drawn out more as it's my fave.
I can see why people are reading it. I think our summer here is keen to get going.
Esther
Esther--to begin, or end?
To end.
Summer is fed up with itself; exhausted from trying to muster a little light between rain storms. It would now like to go off to holiday in southern climes. Perhaps it will return refreshed next year and manage to last longer than June?
Esther
Oh! Wonderful! The WV is 'muckity'.
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