Summer When It Lingers

.... in the day's weather, in the memory, in a poem.

Photo by Josh Chiodo on Unsplash

In the coastal-temperate climate where I live, the change of seasons is less an edict than a long conversation. Nights are getting cooler here and there’s some rain in the forecast, but most afternoons are still swimmingly warm, even this late in the year. Whether summer is saying a slow goodbye where you are, or you’re remembering it fondly while you put on your parka and head out to shovel the driveway, here are a couple of look-backs evoking sunnier days.

---

LEMON TREE, HUMMINGBIRD


In the café garden, at the table underneath the lemon tree,
I glance into the branches overhead each time
I hear that diving thrum, too headlong for honeybees, 
and at last I spot him, hovering inside the leafy canopy 
on blurred wings before he perches on a twig,
flicks wingtips, darts stiletto beak to left and right, 
and settles, longer than I’ve seen one of his kind
consent to sit. Each time I look away and then look back
I nearly miss him, small and sober in green shade,
gray belly-down and short tail-fan as everyday
as any tiny resting bird’s. Time stretches out to measure
both his heartbeat and mine; I swear I see him sigh,
relax into a moment’s grace from showmanship and speed –- 
unchallenged now by predator or rival inside this dome
of green and yellow, leaf-sheltered, unobserved 
except by one too large and still to see. Five minutes
by my heartbeat, a long slow rest by his, and now his wings
begin again to blur; he flight-hops to another twig, a branch,
the next, zooms through the leafy cover and aloft
into his sunlit aerial sweetness-sipping day.

---

ANOTHER POEM WITH ROSEMARY IN IT


I have already written one poem with rosemary
rooted at its heart, the pungent metaphor
of that aroma lively in a garden (and on my skin) 
a whole day after pruning. 
                                               And there is more to say:
about its tough and woody branches, the dull 
and dusty green of its needles, the workaday blue flowers 
that cling at intervals along the tenderest stems;
about its stoic growing habits, endless sun and sand-dry soil
no trouble, it digs in and thrives without complaint,
daunted by nothing really except the sides of a container,
its hardy roots inclined to sulk and wither when
they find themselves confined.
                                                       Above all (and it bears 
repeating in more poems than one) the operatic volume 
of that scent and, if you are so bold, that flavor –-
as if some plain and weathered worker on an hourly wage
tipped back his head unbidden, poured out Puccini
in purest loudest tenor, making a theatre of garden,
kitchen, stockpot, roasting pan; for such a gruff
and sturdy earthbound grower, its taste is best enjoyed
ethereally, an aria borne on softened evening air
from open windows to the street below.
                                                                        Bees enjoy
its flowers, and I would enjoy, once, tasting honey
from a rosemary-fed hive, I would enjoy forever 
the sunlit humming garden where enough rosemary
blossomed, to keep that hive in honey.

---

[You can listen to an audio rendition of the poems (spoken, not sung) using the little widget above the photograph.]

“Lemon Tree, Hummingbird” is poem-as-journalism, reportage of the breaking news that hummingbirds do actually rest for more than ten seconds at a time. Logically that had to be true, but I’d never seen it happen before … and to watch it happen while I was sitting outside on a warm day under the canopy of a lemon tree, nearly losing sight of that tiny bird over and over because of the dapple of leaf and shadow and because I had the privilege of observing him from his least flashy angle — it felt like the best kind of exclusive.

The other poem of mine that has rosemary in it was featured in my very first Substack post. In that poem the rosemary performed with distinction as a metaphor for a particular kind of admirable defiance. In this poem it is all about its own distinctive self … and hey, it’s just occurred to me why the suchness of rosemary drew me back for a second round of writing. Quick story: I did a certain amount of public singing in my teens and twenties — no, not opera, mostly the kinds of songs you can accompany with fairly basic guitar, but I had some pipes and used them confidently, in churches and at camps and other small gatherings. After one performance I heard someone remark, “You wouldn’t think to look at her that she could sing like that.” There are a lot of ways to react to a *cough* compliment of that kind, and at different times I’ve had all those reactions. The one that stays with me, though? A long, slow, knowing smile as I reflect on my secret super-powers, the capacities that you’d have no idea, looking at me, are mine to wield. This is my affinity with rosemary. Who’d know, looking at its unflashy workaday self, that its aroma and taste can sing the way they do? And oh my, how they sing.

I’ve billed these as summertime poems, even though neither of them explicitly mention a season. The green-and-yellow of the lemon tree’s shade, though, the music through the open window, the buzz of the bees in that imagined rosemary garden … if you came here looking for some summer, I hope you’ve come away warm.