August by Niki Giovanni

Apples fall   peaches harvested

One kind of pear is pickled

Blackberries turn your fingers blue

Some cucumbers get pickled

Biscuits bake or they are fried

Grits are cooked real slow

Green tomatoes in bacon fat

Then it's time to go

From Grandmother's country home

Back up to the city

I'd rather stay in the barefoot South

where everything is pretty

~ Love Poems by Niki Giovanni

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full,

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.

But when the bath was filled we found a fur,

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.

I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

~ Seamus Heaney

Tis The Last Rose of Summer

Tis the last rose of summer 

Left blooming alone; 

All her lovely companions 

Are faded and gone: 

No flower of her kindred, 

No rose-bud is nigh, 

To reflect back her blushes, 

Or give sigh for sigh. 

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one! 

To pine on the stem; 

Since the lovely are sleeping, 

Go, sleep thou with them. 

Thus kindly I scatter 

Thy leaves o'er the bed, 

Where thy mates of the garden 

Lie scentless and dead. 

So soon may I follow, 

When friendships decay, 

And from Love's shining circle 

The gems drop away. 

When true hearts lie wither'd, 

And fond ones are flown, 

Oh! who would inhabit 

This bleak world alone? 

~ Thomas Moore

Summer Stars

Bend low again, night of summer stars. 

So near you are, sky of summer stars, 

So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars, 

Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl, 

So near you are, summer stars, 

So near, strumming, strumming, 

So lazy and hum-strumming. 

~ Carl Sandburg

In The Summer

In the summer

I stretch out on the shore

And think of you

Had I told the sea

What I felt for you,

It would have left its shores,

Its shells,

Its fish,

And followed me.

~ Nizar Qabbani

Summer Shower

A drop fell on the apple tree,

Another on the roof;

A half a dozen kissed the eaves,

And made the gables laugh.

A few went out to help the brook,

That went to help the sea.

Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,

What necklaces could be!

The dust replaced in hoisted roads,

The birds jocoser sung;

The sunshine threw his hat away,

The orchards spangles hung.

The breezes brought dejected lutes,

And bathed them in the glee;

The East put out a single flag,

And signed the fete away. 

~ Emily Dickinson

In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden

Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart 

Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and 

Landed in the middle of those ever-so-slightly green leaves 

That seem no mix of seeds and soil but of pastels and light and 

Chalk x’s mark our oaks that are supposed to be cut down   

I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence 

And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that 

They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense 

In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear 

She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street without 

It has always puzzled me that people coo over bonsai trees when 

You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of   

A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets 

So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds 

With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter 

About how the castles you flew over made crenellated shadows on   

The water in the rainbarrel has overflowed and made a small swamp 

I think the potatoes might turn out slightly damp don’t worry 

If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire 

So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them 

To close I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you

~ Matthea Harvey

Summer at North Farm

Finnish rural life, ca. 1910

Fires, always fires after midnight, 

the sun depending in the purple birches 

and gleaming like a copper kettle. 

By the solstice they’d burned everything, 

the bad-luck sleigh, a twisted rocker, 

things “possessed” and not-quite-right. 

The bonfire coils and lurches, 

big as a house, and then it settles. 

The dancers come, dressed like rainbows 

(if rainbows could be spun), 

and linking hands they turn 

to the melancholy fiddles. 

A red bird spreads its wings now 

and in the darker days to come.

~ Stephen Kuusisto

Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night 

And dress by yellow candle-light. 

In summer, quite the other way, 

I have to go to bed by day. 

I have to go to bed and see 

The birds still hopping on the tree, 

Or hear the grown-up people's feet 

Still going past me in the street. 

And does it not seem hard to you, 

When all the sky is clear and blue, 

And I should like so much to play, 

To have to go to bed by day?

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Fireflies in The Garden

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, 

And here on earth come emulating flies, 

That though they never equal stars in size, 

(And they were never really stars at heart) 

Achieve at times a very star-like start. 

Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

~ Robert Frost

The Flowers

All the names I know from nurse: 

Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse, 

Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock, 

And the Lady Hollyhock. 

Fairy places, fairy things, 

Fairy woods where the wild bee wings, 

Tiny trees for tiny dames-- 

These must all be fairy names! 

Tiny woods below whose boughs 

Shady fairies weave a house; 

Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme, 

Where the braver fairies climb! 

Fair are grown-up people's trees, 

But the fairest woods are these; 

Where, if I were not so tall, 

I should live for good and all.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The Wild Flower's Song

As I wandered the forest,

The green leaves among,

I heard a Wild Flower

Singing a song.

'I slept in the earth

In the silent night,

I murmured my fears

And I felt delight.

'In the morning I went

As rosy as morn,

To seek for new joy;

But oh! met with scorn.'

~ William Blake

Ah! Sunflower!

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time.

Who countest the steps of the Sun;

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:

Arise from their graves and aspire.

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

~ William Blake

Leaves Compared with Flowers

A tree's leaves may be ever so good,

So may its bar, so may its wood;

But unless you put the right thing to its root

It never will show much flower or fruit.

But I may be one who does not care

Ever to have tree bloom or bear.

Leaves for smooth and bark for rough,

Leaves and bark may be tree enough.

Some giant trees have bloom so small

They might as well have none at all.

Late in life I have come on fern.

Now lichens are due to have their turn.

I bade men tell me which in brief,

Which is fairer, flower or leaf.

They did not have the wit to say,

Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bar, leaves and bark,

To lean against and hear in the dark.

Petals I may have once pursued.

Leaves are all my darker mood.

~ Robert Frost

Wind and Window Flowers

LOVERS, forget your love,

And list to the love of these,

She a window flower,

And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil

Was melted down at noon,

And the cagèd yellow bird

Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,

He could not help but mark,

And only passed her by,

To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind,

Concerned with ice and snow,

Dead weeds and unmated birds,

And little of love could know.

But he sighed upon the sill,

He gave the sash a shake,

As witness all within

Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed

To win her for the flight

From the firelit looking-glass

And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside

And thought of naught to say,

And morning found the breeze

A hundred miles away.

~ Robert Frost

Spring Rain

I thought I had forgotten, 

But it all came back again 

To-night with the first spring thunder 

In a rush of rain.

I remembered a darkened doorway 

Where we stood while the storm swept by, 

Thunder gripping the earth 

And lightning scrawled on the sky.

The passing motor busses swayed, 

For the street was a river of rain, 

Lashed into little golden waves 

In the lamp light's stain.

With the wild spring rain and thunder 

My heart was wild and gay; 

Your eyes said more to me that night 

Than your lips would ever say. . . .

I thought I had forgotten, 

But it all came back again 

To-night with the first spring thunder 

In a rush of rain. 

~ Sara Teasdale

The Year's at the Spring

The year's at the spring,

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in his Heaven— 

All's right with the world! 

~ Robert Browning

First Day of Spring

First day of spring--
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn.

~ Matsuo Basho

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day; 

And give us not to think so far away 

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here 

All simply in the springing of the year. 

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; 

And make us happy in the happy bees, 

The swarm dilating round the perfect trees. 

And make us happy in the darting bird 

That suddenly above the bees is heard,

The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, 

And off a blossom in mid air stands still. 

For this is love and nothing else is love, 

The which it is reserved for God above 

To sanctify to what far ends He will,

But which it only needs that we fulfil.

~ Robert Frost