summer poem written in winter

It is summer,

and the world is fertile and air-hungry;

a tangled mass of green.

*

I swear I haven’t had a summer since I was young and homeless and could not escape the sun.

*

Back then summer tasted like sarsaparilla soda,

and the milk-white flavor of freshly churned ice cream.

I swear there hasn’t been a summer like this for ten years.

No river water or hot pavement or cold showers naked together.

* 

 No starving or bones or skinny knees.

Ten years. A decade.

Time is on its knees these days.

Hours pass and seconds,

months as hours.

A year becomes a dream.

I’m beginning to understand the concept of a lifetime.

*

Time is funny and we are getting old.

At night my fingers find the grey of your beard.

And in the morning I relish in the way sleep rests like fog against the bridge of your nose,

and that we have been together to see it all.

Time consumes itself.

No beginning. No end.

We stare into infinity.

An ouroboros with its tail pressed against its tongue.

Nothing changes.  

*

Yet, summer is for dreaming anyway.

And all my dreams have wooden floors,

creaking and sun-choked by dust.

When I wake in the summer it is after dawn.

Already there is daylight on my face.

I wonder for a while,

in that space between sleeping and waking.

In a place where my body doesn’t hurt,

where we are back in the library stacks,

avoiding the sun.

*

Fingertips roaming a forest of broken spines.

Summer has always smelt of ash,

and the soft bouquet of old books.