SUMMER

starts when the Dodge

downshifts    drifts down the path

onto thin tufted grass

sinks into loose

shifting soil   settles

      in sandiness

the small hopeless lawn

aprons the south side of the house

struggles towards its own rootedness

hunts for sunlight

through holes in the deciduous haunt

two stumps   one stunted spirea in new pointed leaf

startled now

by car doors which slam

first one   then the other

      summer starts

when island air curls on girls’

freckled cheeks   feckless bare legs

starts when the screen door unlatches

and the thick door behind

creaks its wood-swollen groan

releasing odours of a weather-sealed house

double-windowed for months

caulked against cold

as if cold could be stopped

it iced the lake twenty feet down

froze every sturgeon

one fish at a time

      summer starts

up the staircase   iron beds

guarding the past   last year’s swimsuits

hanging

ghost torsos noosed on their hooks

stretched overlong

summer last   on the bottom

of the unplumbed blue tub    spider legs   moth wings

drained into otherness

last year’s ant traps

shadflies    mosquitoes   houseflies in husks

their wire-thin legs curling in

summer starts

    from the second-floor window

overlooking the lake

the world open-handed   opening

into each summer gone

    each summer beginning

in shore light

stretching beyond the dark line of pines