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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