to summer

so it is.
in september, the seasons break apart in threads
first the air: a rising thinness cuts out leaf-shapes from the wet heat
age eating away at crisping blades of bleached grass
the slowly oxidating leaves of trees dressed in verdigris,
the exhausted sun, leaning orange and rose at dusk against the bricks and trunks
marks the veins of blue and brown and gold eyes set in paling faces
wreathed hands and arms weave closer or come apart.
sounds change -
this knife-air conducts words differently
sets apart each footstep
sets apart voices
sets apart each glad and difficult summer
from the semisweet decline into fall.
painted in memory colors dark, red and rust,
foreshadowing the gray of february, the lapidary green of june
but before those, the waning days
reserve a future-memory
holidays in november
bare branches and howling cold,
cigarettes on the stoop
the candles lit in december
the speeding year becoming years.
holy old things are lost
but like recurring dreams,
found, created, remembered, or discovered in the act.
the long white ribbon of clouds,
the lines and circles of stars
reaching through weeks,
to the first warm day,
to the tender cool of may,
to summer.