A Poem for the First Day of Summer

Hot Shots: a poem

In the full New England sun
I’m bleached into a ghost, a limp winding sheet
Do not even imagine
The tropics

The flowers are hot and bright
Some cool green things wilt beside them
– which am I?

I try to capture
On the lens of my brain –
Not to mention the Sony Cyber-Shot
I am dragging around each day to memorialize the radiance
Of my best students, my garden stars
Like heroes on the gravestones of time

-- the quality of air
when no two-leggers are afoot
Even flying things seem quieted
Bees have no buzz for this perfectly sweet
and soporific afternoon

The birds are down to
a few scattered postprandial cheeps

And the echoes of man-made engines hovering above
sound merely like the pleasant burbles
of some contented deity at his afternoon nap
dreaming of lazy, self-indulgent days
Will I ever learn such wisdom?