August, New Hope, 1961

By Christopher Bernard

The heavy ripening summer,
green in the mountains,
high wheat, sleek corn,
alfalfa massed against the ground,
strawberries, raspberries, black,
peaches almost over-ripe,
tomatoes big and sweet –
a sultry land baking hot
with loam, topsoil, sleep.

The year ripening:
the wind from the north, in snow, rain,
ice, forgotten. Trickles
of moisture tickle the back of your neck.
Nothing tempts like ice-sweat lemonade,
except maybe a plunge 
in a pool under the hickories.
Time stops for weeks.
You never want it to move again.

August the earth in that place slept
and dreamt of a half-forgotten spring,
winter dead, July’s hopes,
as a whisper of coolness slipped inside,
like a drop of water inside a crack.
And under the sultry atmosphere
a breath of ice stole like a knife, 
steely and rare. . . .
Someone now long dead
looked up from her summer book, hesitated, and said,
to no one in particular, “I can feel fall in the air.”

_____
	
Christopher Bernard’s collection The Socialist’s Garden of Verses won a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and was named one of the “Top Indie Books of 2021” by Kirkus Reviews.