Dispatch #7

Summer approaches

The first day of summer is ten days away, but the weather’s already drifted far from spring. This week has been swelteringly hot and I’ve spent most of my time indoors, which reminded me of this poem written last year in late June.

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The Room Is Summer’s Channel

i.

Evening opens song
expanding
into soundless dark.
That we’re here—
that we’re here at all
in summer’s
gutter, moved to speak.

ii.

Thunderstorms gather,
dim the room,
indent the window
where sky sieves
gray through old glass; gray
now blue at
the brink of all black.

iii.

Even the shadows
swelter, webbed
across asphalt, fall-
en from tall
dandelions—a
heatwave’s re-
lentless impressions.

iv.

Phantom pain in place
of human
touch. The room isn’t
as quiet
as an other would
be. Make do
with night, reaching through.

v.

Lost in the mind, or
lost in the
world, I watch a storm
rake over
the mountain; fine lines
wind slants
sideways, slurring sun.

vi.

How morning expands
the window
beyond itself, as
if the glass
were light and the frame
a thing blown
into the margins.