Summer Wonders

Summer makes it hard to think.
I come home and want to sleep
like alcoholics want to drink. I can’t connect
the dots. Today the light is made of waves,
not particles. Heat is made of sex. To dare
to eat one peach seemed well within
my reach but eating three – unconscionably
ripe right off the tree – bought from
a farmer’s market in the park – demanded
a supernal bravery. Sex is made of heat.
Truth be told I yearn for Fall but late July

refuses not completely to belong to me;
no river – steaming swamp though it may be –
can be rejected by my sea. When I was
less than twelve years old I saw a movie
in the sweltering hot summer of a small
suburban town. I had prematurely
grown – the privacies of masturbation were
to me well known – West Side Story made
a mess of everything: Richard Beymer
singing Tony – to Maria – so transparently
intoxicating – shattering Natalie Wood:

I loved them both but lusted most for
all the Puerto Ricans. (Come on, get tasty
with me, boys.) Sex is made of Leonard
Bernstein’s hasty beats and joys. Summer
wonders if that ancient lady sitting on
a bus-stop bench in New York City wonders
when, precisely, she stopped being pretty.
Summer wonders if one ever learns
it’s suitable to be one’s own peculiar burning
brand of beautiful. Always at the brink.
Summer makes it hard to think.


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