And all that it might bring

Summer In The Days

For Karen

Summer in the days now, you at the other end
of a long one, falling asleep before we’ve said
what or who, like the owl I spooked this morning,
or the moon in its waning roundness running from
sharp sun and all that it might bring with it this day.

We hope water will be enough, that where we stand
might afford a bank to lie our green bodies upon,
a small nest hidden in oleander where a young bird
squeals hunger to mother, to father, both too busy
with morning provisions like the curled spider of
Segovia’s plucking hand playing Gavotte en Rondeau
along a strung trellis of shimmering nylon that provides
all we might ever need or desire in this province of flesh.



Who can bear the sky such as it is? The circling we
press into with our wet noses against clouded glass
and the black sphere of believing it all matters for
something other than what it matters for, everything
not nearly enough, not yet, not as I slip my dry hands
beneath your soft breasts and, like Atlas, endeavor to
hold such bountiful unborne worlds bravely above me.

Summer in the days now, yes, and this will resummer
the places given to and taken by all the barren winters
before now that have visited broken shapes in the ice,
thrown down stillness into the underriver’s embrace
to scrum and polish all the way to the bright bluing sea,
all the way to where we might again be scattered enough
to shore a small place, a place we might lie side by side.

Joseph Gallo
August 2, 2013