O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Joseph Hutchison
HEART OF SUMMER
Summer sky, paint
our minds with purples,
greens, your hot creams,
your pinks; daub them
on the speckled eggshell
of our distraction.
*
Sprinkle us with scents
of dust, summer wind,
and olive-leaf fragrance,
musk of tomato vines
sprawled and laden, sage
crushed by hooves of deer.
*
Summer heat, infuse
our sweat with intensities
of dreams; cleanse us of all
that’s unacknowledged,
unloved; let us leave little
unsaid that needs saying.
*
Cure us of our vacancy,
summer stars; draw figures
on our darkness—Swan,
Eagle, shining Lyre; let us
wander like a radio wave
among their gravities.
*
As the lark glides upward
on the rosined string of desire,
beat in her breast as you beat
in ours, heart of summer,
keep life alive in us, help us
not to forget why we sing.
About the writer:
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate (2014-2019), has published eight full poetry collections and eleven chapbooks, most recently Under Sleep’s New Moon and The World as Is: New & Selected Poems, 1972-2015. His latest chapbook, Cliff Swallow at Mesa Verde, is forthcoming this June. Joe’s poems have appeared widely in journals—most recently in Cutthroat, Pratik, Tar River Poetry, and THINK Journal—and in numerous anthologies, including A Ritual to Read Together: Poems In Conversation With William Stafford and New Poets Of The American West. He lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, his native city.
Image: Dog Days (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. Public domain via MidJourney AI.
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