Another Ode to Summer

How many odes have been written to summer?

Too many, I’m certain.

The winter is the cranky old man down the street

who just won’t die.

Spring is a flirt, tentative and unsure.

Then next we know, the pools are full

of pale-skinned, loose-limbed, screaming, little monsters.

The cicadas’ screeching drone fills the air

The fireflies wink in the twilight

Every evening show (reruns anyway) is broken

by the desperate, repetitive warnings of the weather man.

The nights are cracked with thunder.

How many days have we hidden in air conditioned rooms

and written metaphors about the wall of heat

and the woolen blanket of humidity?

Too many, I’m certain.

We memorialize baseball games and bad hotdogs,

family reunions and drunk uncles,

camping trips and whatever bit who this time.

As if all the long year we have waited,

impatiently tapping our foot for green, wild summer.

And now that it is here we fling ourselves upon it

determined play as hard as we work.

At least, until we notice how damned hot it is,

and hide indoors instead.

How many of us have forgotten what summer is?

Forgotten how live without chilled beer,

hot showers in cold rooms,

movies on cable and televised sports?

Too many, I’m certain.

Summer isn’t here for our amusement.

And it doesn’t care for odes or sonnets.

Summer is doing its job, ripening the earth,

Making the dogs lazy, the squirrels fat, and the bunnies multiply,

So old man winter can take pot shots at them

with his well-oiled twenty-two.