Wasps walk the fruit

fallen into grass.

The same variety

planted in valleys a hundred years ago

by farmers in dirt-stiffened dungarees.

 

Or so I wish to believe.  I am drunk

on the words of summer:

Brandywine, Celeste, Anise Swallowtail, Cloudless Sulfur.

 

Outside the window,

figs sag on their branches,

swooning with heat.

 

I am barefoot in the kitchen

halving and handing them over,

their tender flesh close to jellied.

 

I can never have enough

 

of the delicate, violet husk of

evening in summer,

walking hand in hand

with my eight-year-old daughter

to deliver our surfeit bartered

to the neighbor, figs

for tomatoes.

 

Of the shimmer of the swimming pool

laid atop the surface

of my days; and the way

the woman my daughter will someday become

is already housed

in her narrow-hipped body.

 

The cup of summer is so full it almost overspills its lip.