COMING HOME 

IN  AUGUST 

Poem for Today - August 2, 2014

RETURN

Never return in August to what you love;

Along the leaves will be rust

And over the hedges dust,

And in the air vague thunder and silence burning;

Choose some happier time for your returning.

Choose Spring, acrid and cool, unshaped, unmade;

See all that you love come awake,

Stream swell and buds break;

Or choose some Autumn month with loud winds crying,

Stormy with leaves and dark birds southward flying.

Choose Winter if you must, for that stark season

Waits, as you learned to wait,

For loveliness come late.

And all that you have longed for you may hold

Safely within the Winter’s barren cold.

But never return in Summer to what you love,

O heavy beauty that your eyes possess,

O deepest beauty past its perfectness,
Where is the mad bright wonder, the divine

Rapturous lightness that eludes all sense –

That is like flame – that is like wind – like wine –

Only more strange and sweet of influence?

Where are you? Where?

The smell of fruit hangs in the windless air.

(c) Bernice Kenyon