Summer is a sweet and complicated time out here in our beautiful bubble, our world of beaches, dazzling sunsets, summer air that carries the scent of flowers, of deer and turtles, owls and finches.
We stay home while everyone is jamming our waters, restaurants, clubs and stores. We take it as a privilege to host our special guests. There is no better opportunity to share what we love.
As autumn turns nights chilly and the bay quickens my breath as I jump in for last swims, I am grateful to be here.
Here are a couple of short poems that express my gratitude. Enjoy!
Autumn Light
Acrylic on Canvas
12 x 12"
September Hampton
August smolders in September.
Deer run through molting trees,
turtles cross the roads
to find a mound of mulch.
They’ll hibernate, come cold.
I feel at home again.
The pace resumes
in cooling, insect racket air.
Echinacea weeps
to faded colors
and the Susans’ leggy remains
drop petals and promise.
In the bay’s phosphorescent glow
I swim naked and alone.
The nearing absence of dog days
roars in my ears.
Still Here
I live in grace-sweetened rooms,
fill my space with sunflowers,
with paintings, stained glass,
with music, books and poems.
I gather plants
eat sweet and bitter harvest
from my own garden, by my own hands,
the dirt beneath my nails a badge of living.
There is a part of me
that holds regret, a voice
that weeps and can’t forget
the past and all it holds.
I float along a river
in a boat with silken sails,
dip my hand into ripples
and dream a thousand dreams
of lives gone by and
those I’ve yet to live,
I fall into the passing water with my eyes
and drown there in the moment.
A loud, insistent voice prods me
“do and work, become, become, become.”
but what and who, but me, I ask myself,
this breath and body, temporary being, this
flash of light curled on this sofa
in late summer afternoon, enchanted
by the August clamor in the trees,
cicadas’ scratchy song.
How can this be the another ending,
last August days of aqua skies?
How can another piece of me be gone?
Another passing changeless change
subtle but obvious, taking me with it.
Change
Only an interruption, an in between,
my body seems an object
I perceive,
moving always moving
gale force— or sometimes
still enough
to differentiate the call
of crickets from cicadas.
Like tonight in the noisy silence
of warm autumn evening
I am air at dusk
breathed in and out,
become
a gentle breeze.