"Now cosmos in bloom and snow-in-summer
opening along the garden’s stone borders,

 

a moment toward a little good fortune,
water from the watering can,

 

to blossom, so natural, it seems, and still
the oldest blooms outside my door are flourishing

 

according to their seedtime. 
They have lived as in trust

 

of tended ground, not of many seasons
as the lingering bud in late summer,

 

when leaves have reached their greenest,
when a chill enters the nights,

 

when a star I’ve turned to, night after night,
vanished in the shift of constellations. 

 

even in August,
But when on a bare branch,sprig starts,a

 

 

sprig to stem—as if to say, See,
there’s kinship with the perennials

 

you think so hardy—voice
the moment among the oaks, toast

 

the spring in summer, as once each May
a shot of vodka is poured on bare dirt

 

among gravestones to quench the dead,
among the first stars of this new evening."

 

-James Brasfield, Late Summer