Summer

 

It was a summer of loganberries
of lake ripples and sky light,
rough grain of the couch beneath my thigh.

Summer of pondering leaves
and patience before a worm, for its secrets.

Summer of praying at altars of berries,
and lying across sea rocks, asking of them.

Of communion and tears,
homecoming to the one I had lost,
the humming earth.

Fierce waves beat off my sadness.
Sand scrubbed the withering from my face.
Only sea glint remained,
all the pain burned off.

That’s one thing
the sun is for, you know:
to bake pain.

And the wind, to strip it away,
and the sand, to buff the final shards into shimmer.

After all that,
an estranged happiness arose
and a space from which I could see the astonishment of green.
I could let it make me weep, and be blessed by it.

The thought occurred: perhaps like this,
if I could remember this,
I could do less harm.
I could inhabit humbly.

Perhaps I could even offer something–
be like a berry, or a vine, to the world.

– Tara Mohr

 

photo credit: Sacha Styles