Summer Letter
When I miss you the most,
when I want to call
it’s to tell of small things
a fox’s eyes in my headlights,
bees cutting holes in the peony petals,
an evening chorus
of two owls, sixteen frogs,
and a mouse in the wall above my head.
These are the things I know,
the things I can count and describe.
Sunrise behind the sumac,
the smell of wet linden flowers
through an open window,
turtles digging silently
in the soft sand of the roadside.
These are the things I know
will come, will calm
with their rhythm of
on and on and on and
if you were here
you’d understand what I know,
what I mean when I say
the night smells like honey,
the fireflies
make the field look like a mirror
reflecting the sky.