Summer

Laura Lush
From:   Blues & True Concussions: Six New Toronto Poets. Anansi, 1997.

Between the rows of corn, the gold pronouncements
of summer, the earth is scarred by our backs.

Tiny vagrants alone in our bodies.
Mottled children who have strayed from our homes.

Nothing insurmountable—the warm wet passageway
to the underground fort.

On either side, the earth moving its cow belly.
Slow song of grass yellowing.

The boys' crude beds of stones and twigs. Pyres
we later sink into the ground.

All of this to keep us away from the small pouch of marbles—
the limed eyes of birds glowing off sticks.

All things transfixed:
the chrysalides' luminous quiet, the stars' rubeied prayers.

De-winged, leaves jostling across the sky.
What's left?

Our bodies, the axis under the weight of copper sky.
Our belief that all things begin from our hands,

that even summer can be contained in a jar—
that one butterfly bright enough to last past autumn.

As our heads keep turning with the blue curve of earth,
pulling legs, arms toward the fantastic rush of our lives.

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