Summer, Here


In the beginning, the unbelievable burgeoning.
Did I plant these things in the garden?
What in God's name are they?

In the beginning . . .
Electricity turned to flesh. A billion
nerves softened and shocked into blossom, slopped

with a big brush
hastily onto the green
velvet curtain we called spring. This

is what happens when the living gets easy. Out
of the moss, a lot of little fingers
digging themselves up. Ah!

such marriage weather,
but in it, too, the delicious
mysteries of some other

couple's precipitous divorce. What

was all that love
but a lot of grasshoppers dancing
in a crate with some overripe plums? We all

saw it coming.

"Go ahead," is all my son
wants to hear me say. "Feel
free to jump on the beds today. Flap

your arms and scream
for hours at the top of your lungs."
And my step-daughter, "Hey,

how about I take
you and all your friends to the mall,
and pick you up in seven hours? First

I'd like to give you
two hundred dollars."

And why not? What

a morsel, if you could slip
the bones from a hummingbird and dip
the whole thing in chocolate sauce. What

was so wrong
about the 'seventies? The Free Love, big shoes, High Times, daisy decals
on the shower doors? Now
and then, a few
sober words about death:

Hey, kids, don't play with matches.

But then something changed. The states

make perfect puzzle pieces, like the decades,
like the seasons, but in truth

you can find yourself crossing
from Indiana to Kentucky
without ever knowing you did. The child-

raccoon we fed those bagels to
in the backyard yesterday
is swarmed with black-flies in the road today. See

how neatly God has trained
(with whips and chains) those butterflies
to dance from flower to flower. A few
delicate shreds of terror
trembling in the air.

"I am summer, here

to please you," the world says to me. I nod
pleasantly, but don't forget
the feeling that spread
just under my skin

the day a woman I'd always liked
stopped me in the stairwell to tell me
what she'd always hated about me
as if it were advice.


-- Laura Kasischke