A Poet's Ode to Summer

As we come to the end of August, autumn lies before us. Fall is a beautiful time of year, but I think an appreciation for summer poetry should be given before we jump into all the writings that add such beauty to an already colorful season.

I have often found that fall and winter poems are of superior depth and emotion than that of spring or summer, but that does not mean the latter are of lesser truth and value.

I believe my favoritism is simply due to the correlation of emotion to seasons, and how our falls and winters in life are often the very ones that lead us to blossom in the spring and summer.

The poems below each offer a piece of summer joy, and the beauty that summer does carry.

August of another summer, and once again

I am drinking the sun

and the lilies

again are spread

across the water. -Mary Oliver

''Come said the wind to the

leaves one day,

Come o'er the meadows

and we will play.

Put on your dresses Scarlet

& Gold, For summer is gone

and the days grow cold.''

-George Eliot

''August is the slow gentle month

that stretches out the longest

across the span of a year.

It yawns and lingers on

with the light

in its palms.''

-Victoria Erickson

The butterflies and bumblebees; the sun,

the clouds, the blue. The early summer mornings

when the grass is fresh with dew. The dandelions and daisies; the sun,

the clouds, the green. The way the sky is bigger than it's ever been.

-Ellis Nightingale

The dog days of summer

The Sunday of seasons

The warmth of the trees

The glow of the evenings

August

Will you promise me to slow down

If I swear to savor every drop of you

-Emma the poet

Then followed that beautiful season...

Summer-

filled was the air

with a dreamy magical light;

and the landscape lay

as if new created

in all then freshness of

childhood.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

August of another summer,

and once again I am drinking the sun,

and the lilies again are spread

across the water.

-Mary Oliver

Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar...

-William Faulkner

a golden afternoon of August: every breath from the hills so full of life that it seemed whoever respired it, though dying, might revive.

-Emily Bronte

Summer rushes in

on the heels of spring,

eager to take her turn.

And then she dances with wild abandon.

But the time soon comes

when she gratefully falls,

exhausted and sated,

in the auburn arms

of autumn.

-Cristen Rodgers

I hope these summer poems sing words of warmth to you long after summer has passed.