A Small Summer Book

and here’s to fall!

You’ve seen some of these poems as they were written, but I’ve sequenced them together. It seems appropriate to send them all out as one piece now, as August is almost over, and fall is already signaling through the seams.

Looking forward to cool weather, hats and sweaters—

JM

A Small Summer Book
         in memoriam Fanny Howe


Even shadows melt 
in this heat, and cast black ink
down the concrete stairs. 


*

Blue chicory sprawls
along a hill, verging on
purple. Further up, 
an old stone church looms, and bends 
deep into its own shadow. 


*

Poetry is all 
that remains between us—here
in a single breath. 


*

A mandala of 
weeds whisks the blunt summer light 
in a cracked concrete 
field, where I rest my vision 
and wait for panic to pass. 


*

Shapely with the scent 
of lilacs—
the slow summer wind. 


*

No poet is gone 
for long—the poems breathe them
back as we breathe through 
the poems. Voice now outside
of time: neither yours nor mine.


*

A flower reaches 
through the heat, attached and un-
attached to its stem. 


*

In the window clouds 
convulse, blue to gray to black. 
Rain strafes haze drifting 
in from leftover forests 
primordial. Sidewalks steam. 


*

In an alley, Queen 
Anne’s lace leans
into its shadow.

Into its shadow,
Queen Anne’s lace
unraveling light.


		July-August, 2025