Farewell Song to Summer
quatrina
Article voiceover
How many times have I stood Beside this canal at the end of summer In the early morning light As the cool of autumn begins to sing? How many songs does the earth sing As petals fall where flowers stood Season after season in changing light, Autumn, winter, spring, summer? How does autumn harmonize with summer As both begin to strum and sing The waves and particles of light Where in the beginning God stood? How has the universe withstood The strangeness of the death of summer, Year after year the dimming light, The song no one seems to know how to sing? And yet I sing where I have stood, This half-light farewell song to summer.
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William Blake wrote a song to America
Even with illustrations
About Red Orc
And I think some
Beautiful woman
And all those things mysterious
Lonesome farewell to summer
He even quotes Washington
Then as now
A forbidden figure
Jonathan you say your poem
Beautifully
Slightly differently
Than it reads on substack
the last couple of lines
For a hundred years
No one guessed
Despite the name of his poem
That William Blake loved the American Revolution
They thought he was talking about
Who-knows-what
America is the world's summer secret
Suddenly last summer
July 4th
They say truth will out
And green shoots will replace
Petals in fall where flowers stood
Is a hundred years too long for truth?
And there were others
As the surgeon officer said in the movie JFK
Upon the autopsy
All the figures there
High state officials
later absent
In condensed narratives
And so many versions
Of autopsy x-rays
But that is a minor slight
Compared to Newton
Who censored Leibniz
For a thousand years
Whatever
California Valley Girl
And everyone
Except NASA
And their Kepler telescope
or something
Forgets the pure scientist
Named Kepler
Who helped discover America
With his astrological reading of the stars
Where will winter preserve the green
Shoots of spring
Where Kepler and his witch mother
Flew to the moon
In the world's first science fiction story
And he even talks about G-forces
Upon landing
Oh sure I know about Newton
For every reaction
As tho Aristotle didn't figure that out
And so as a poet
I despair
When summer leaves us
I despair
When I hear leaves rustle
For they are soon to fall
Brilliant reds of North America
So many leaves
So many leaves
I never knew the tree
Had in her
I cannot trust fall
And even less winter
That they will really
Return me to spring
And my mother
Father guarding by