I lie in a hammock in the slow hours
of a summer day, summer at last
in the high country, summer in the air,
in the light, in the poems I’m reading,
poems like deep jade pools of snowmelt
under a summer sun, poems like
whorls of agate. There’s a drift of pollen
through the forest, sifting through
the pines and cedars, a fine gold powder
drifting like the crushed ash of sunlight.
In the seep on the hillside the first
rein orchids appear, the night-blue larkspur,
leopard lilies. All summer the seep
will blaze with flowers under the flare
of sun over the Sierra. The day turns
around a single shaft of sunlight
through the pines. There’s a whisper
of water from Shay Creek,
like the murmuring of voices,
from far away, languorous voices,
honey-tongued, voices whispering
of summer, of stillness, the slow sound
of a heat-drowsed summer noon.
A warm wind rises up the canyon,
sways the pines. Clouds drift over.
If my body were the needle of a compass,
it would point dead center into the deep,
invisible lodestone of this murmuring,
immense, summer day.