Summersense

The grassy green fragrance of Queen Anne's lace,
The brassy sassy yellow-black sunflowers,
The snowmelt rushing downward

Under soft warm air.
Lightly salted sweat at mouth corners,
Deep breaths.

The last waltz of summer.

***********************

Bill Keller wrote a great column in the Sunday NYT about those plodders on Capitol Hill who are all so very sure of their viewpoints. He says what they all need is a good dose of poetry and he quotes the poetry columnist David Orr who commends poetry for encouraging "hesitation, doubt and ambiguity."

The column also includes these wonderful but sorrowful William Carlos Williams lines:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

I've always believed more progress is made by people who have a modicum of humility about whether they've got all the answers. And yet our election process seems to insist on absolute surety on every subject.