MOTIONS INTO SUMMER

A morning light hangs gray above the lake,
while gulls fly west before the noonday heat.
The song of blackbirds and sparrows alternate,
and then a bus drives up the empty street.

It's always good when summer's green appears:
that patch of ground by the expressway underpass--
the park where yuppies walk their nervous dogs--
how suddenly those lawns turn dust to grass.

If I, like that, could dull the tint of memory
then I, too, may green. One stays, one goes;
another waters and another weeds the rows.

Now, sunlight spills across the windowsill,
to show the shell of what the spider caught.
When all the scales fall, our loss weighs naught.

Robert Klein Engler