Poem August 21, 2000 Issue

A psalm of summer

By Roselyn G. Paul

It's a day full of birdsong and bloomings,
when heat has at last settled in,
reaching the extremities—
some collective, remembered fear of heat lingers—
the locusts are silenced by a low-flying helicopter, briefly.

I'm sweeping the studio floor
and some poetry in this act turns me home
to the written word:
that is—how this is the time of year
when small ephemeral spiders
scurry away from the broom
on translucent legs with invisible pinpoint bodies,
belying their presence by motion only and sunlight reflected.
To me they are the unexpectedness,
the apparent transience and swift slipping away of summer.
Is it here now? In respect, I put aside the broom,
deserting small gatherings of dirt and powdered clay
and settling dust, to reflect in words.

Can the exquisite beauty of this nowness be forever—
this warmth, this bloom, this light, this room and
all my many loves?
Can I stop time and hold always
the potential of my children, the presence of my parent,
the well-being of my spouse,
the locus of my friends and family?
In the philosophy of sense, change is the only permanence.
But I find in this shimmering moment, the reality of bliss and
Soul eclipsing time.

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