Bounty

In offering this poem, I am aware that many parts of the country are not experiencing the bounty of the late summer season for reasons of flood and drought and fire. My heart is with you in lament.

 Blessed be the crickets and katydids
    whose voices are a choir.

Blessed be the cicadas,
    their song the sound of summer.

Blessed be the bluebird fledglings,
    making their way in the world. 

Blessed be the groundhogs,
    fattening on windfalls before winter's long sleep.

Blessed be the bumblebees
   slipping through the lips of turtlehead blossoms.

Blessed be the goldfinches
   gleaning seeds from coneflowers and Susans.

Blessed be the ruby-throats
    feeding and fighting on their way south.

Blessed be the mistflower
    offering nectar to swallowtails and skippers.

Blessed be the winterberry
    providing for hungry birds.

Blessed be this late summer stillness,
    slack tide between the seasons.

Blessed are we
    who open to the bounty that surrounds us.

        

        

Attunement

In the abundance of this waning season,
let me be turned to You, O God.
In the sunflowers' cheerful faces
and the Joe-pyes' frothy billows,
in the barn swallows' final flight
and the goldfinches' tinkling song,
in the cicadas' rhythmic whining
and the coneheads' high-pitched drone,
in groundhogs fattening,
and foxes foraging on windfalls,
in the the black gums' first reddening
and the jewelweed's golden glow,
in the myriad offerings of late summer,
let me be turned to You, O God.
Let me be turned to You.

Sleepy Summer

Too tired to write yet the words
want to come.

Words to capture August's breezes,
and her heady scent,
tiger swallowtails on purple phlox,
and ruby throats-chasing the house finches
pecking holes 
in the ripening apples.

Words to paint blue dragonflies
over the pond,
and goldenrod in the fields,
amber meadow grasses waving,
and the buzzing of cicadas
and the bees.

Lazy August morning,
waiting for storms 
and listening to what the land
has to say.