Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Poem for the End of Summer

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:

compost in my shoe said...

A grueling one for many. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.......

Rohrerbot said...

Bring on fall! Too hot to handle this year!

Kateri said...

I'm looking foward to fall, farewell, long, hot, mosquito infested summer...

Lovely poem!

James Golden said...

Haunting poem, I wanted to say, then realized I was using the word you used. But it is.

Carolyn ♥ said...

Thankfully Summer is followed by the glorious season of Autumn to ease the pain of sadness.

Benjamin Vogt said...

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.

Esther Montgomery said...

I can see why people are reading it. I think our summer here is keen to get going.

Esther

Benjamin Vogt said...

Esther--to begin, or end?

Esther Montgomery said...

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'.