Breathing Out the Dark

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

 

Come, summer, the earth is opening for you.

Autumn is igniting secret, slow embers across

The hillside, and when they seize the air and blaze freely,

It will be for you as fireworks

In honor of the long afternoons

You spread—bee dappled—and seed-floating

For children to run through.

 

Come, summer, the streams and rivers

Are inviting your heat to rest in their many cool folds

And moving pockets of pebbles and stones.

Sink into their praising hands and laughter—

All in thanks of you and the shafts of light

You directed at their faces and the fronds of the ferns—

You established trails and made for us paused moments

Of birdsong-filled reflection.

 

Come, summer, hands and backs are readying

To gather the gifts spring spilled upwards from the ground

To be sun-fostered and breeze-held by you.

It is with this thought, this sense of knowing you

For the first time, having missed you

In the star-filled expanse of voice-filled evenings—

This feeling of settling and thanks,

That the earth offers you a place to recompose

Your light among the cool, falling asleep roots,

Until you are ready to rise again with the crickets

And cicadas, and strum for us another season

Of breathing out the dark.

 

 

 

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