Some Other Summer
- Last night while he slept, his brain rummaged
Its bag of tricks and produced a flood,
A traffic snarl, some place he had to get
Beyond, though now he can't say what. Once,
He was the one packing, I the one thinking
I had things to see. Wherever he was, always
He wished himself home. He would
Sleep in his own bed every night if he could.
- All spring and into our longest days, snow
Kept piling up in the mountains, looming over
The valley like a mind's weight. Now
Relieved of its body, water rushes down
The canyons, flooding creek-side houses,
Soaking the fields until they reflect the sky,
Unplantable. We can't believe
It's mid-July, and still there's more snow
Up there, deep and blue and breathing out
Cold far below the glaciers and snowfields
That persist all summer.
Last night
While he was dreaming a sinkhole
Opened forty feet wide in the sodden earth
And forty deep, right under the highway. A girl,
Fifteen, lost to it. Her father at the wheel
Speeding to get home when everything fell
Away. In darkness, on either side, the lucky ones
Stopped and waited. Then turned back.
- Meanwhile, already, the nights lengthen.
Isn't this always happening? Crickets pipe up,
Pipe up, invisible among the leaves,
Waxing as they will into song
With the waxing moon. Have you noticed?
By August, they will be
Overflowing the night. In the dark
That carries us, in the dark we all carry
Inside the future waits. Meanwhile,
It keeps on coming.