Summer [38] Postcolonial Love Poem — Natalie Diaz

I don’t call it sleep anymore.
            I’ll risk losing something new instead—

like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose.

But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing—
a wonder, a grief or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined
            fruit to unfasten from,

despite my trembling.

Read the full poem in Grey Sparrow Journal

Summer Triangle — Safia Elhillo

i formed a body of clay around
a clot of dried blood  i formed

a body of dirt & water i formed
a body of water around red earth &

cracked clay  i formed a body polluted
by want    most of it not mine

Read the full poem in The Journal Mag

From “summer, somewhere” —Danez Smith

somewhere, a sun. below, boys brown as rye play the dozens & ball, jump  in the air & stay there. boys become new moons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise  -blue water to fly, at least tide, at least spit back a father or two. I won’t get started.

Read the full poem in Poetry Foundation

The Summer Day — Mary Oliver

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Read the full poem in The Library of Congress

A Summer Garden — Louise Glück

Several weeks ago I discovered a photograph of my mother sitting in the sun, her face flushed as with achievement or triumph. The sun was shining. The dogs were sleeping at her feet where time was also sleeping, calm and unmoving as in all photographs.  

Read the full poem in Poetry Foundation

Summer’s Elegy — Howard Nemerov

Day after day, day after still day,
The summer has begun to pass away.
Starlings at twilight fly clustered and call,
And branches bend, and leaves begin to fall.
The meadow and the orchard grass are mown,
And the meadowlark’s house is cut down.

Read the full poem in The Writer’s Almanac

Grinding The Lens — Linda Gregg

I leave the typewriter and run
outside in my nightgown and take
the cotton blanket off the line.
It is summer and I am in the middle
of my life. Alone and happy.

Read the full poem in The Wolf Eel

Late Prayers — Jane Hirschfield

Tenderness does not choose its own uses.
It goes out to everything equally
Including rabbit and hawk.
Look: in the iron bucket,
A single nail, a single ruby –
All the heavens and hells.
They rattle in the heart and make one sound.

From Blossoms — Li-Young Lee

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

Read the full poem in Academy of American Poets

Some recent weather — Bob Hicok

you fuck in the rain and no one notices, the rain
fuck-shaped where you are fucking, an animal
with its mouth to your ear, and you
an animal with your mouth to its ear, everyone
on equal footing in the rain, the rain
speaking to your panting with its panting, the rain
washing away the rain

Read the full poem in diode

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