Summer Stars

Carl Sandburg

1878 –1967

Bend low again, night of summer stars.

So near you are, sky of summer stars, So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars, Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl, So near you are, summer stars, So near, strumming, strumming,                 

So lazy and hum-strumming.

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

1935 –2019

Who made the world? 

Who made the swan, and the black bear? 

Who made the grasshopper? 

This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. 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?

The House on the Lake

Philip Metres 1970 

How a house is a self & else, a seeping intoof light deciding the day. A house so closeit breathes as the lake breathes. 

How a lakeis a shelf, an eye, a species of seeing,

burbling of tongues completing the shore.

How a loon is a probing, a genus of dreams,

encyclopedia of summer. Unsummable houseby the lake, generous hinge opening us. 

I loved,in folds of sleep, to hear the back door’s yawn& click. 

You gliding down toward shore& dawn, beyond all frames, reconciling yourself tobracing Long Lake. Into its ever-opening, you—

Summer Morn in New Hampshire

Claude McKay1889 –1948

All yesterday it poured, and all night long    

I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat

Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,    

Upon the grass like running children’s feet.

And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,    

Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,

Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,    

And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.

But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!    The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,

The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,    

The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.

And all things were transfigured in the day,    

But me whom radiant beauty could not move;

For you, more wonderful, were far away,    

And I was blind with hunger for your love.

Erie Waters

Emily Pauline Johnson

A dash of yellow sand,

Wind-scattered and sun-tanned;

Some waves that curl and cream along the margin of the strand;

And, creeping close to these

Long shores that lounge at ease,

Old Erie rocks and ripples to a fresh sou’-western breeze.

A sky of blue and grey;

Some stormy clouds that play

At scurrying up with ragged edge, then laughing blow away,

Just leaving in their trailSome snatches of a gale;

To whistling summer winds we lift a single daring sail.

O! wind so sweet and swift,

O! danger-freighted gift

Bestowed on Erie with her waves that foam and fall and lift,

We laugh in your wild face,

And break into a race

With flying clouds and tossing gulls that weave and interlace.

My Dream

Han Yong-un1879 –1944translated from the Korean by Younghill KangWhen you go walking through the clear dawn in the shade of trees,  my dream will become the few little stars     that are staying on over your head.When during summer days you are sleeping a daytime sleep  unable to conquer the heat, my dream will become the clear winds     that are floating about your vicinage.When in the still Autumn nights, you sit alone reading books,  my dream will become the voice of the cricket, crying     under your table, “chirrup, chirrup.”

Summer in the South

                 The oriole sings in the greening grove                                           As if he were half-way waiting,                                           The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,                                           Timid and hesitating.The rain comes down in a torrent sweep             And the nights smell warm and piney,The garden thrives, but the tender shoots             Are yellow-green and tiny.Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,             Streams laugh that erst were quiet,The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue             And the woods run mad with riot.