Bring on the summer

I saw this tweet in my timeline and was saddened. It celebrates a perfect day in a place of great beauty (marred somewhat by all those contrails), but the call to ‘bring on the summer’ abandons anything that might belong to the present. This poem is my response.

Have the half-remembered paths,
And crumbling plots of disrepair,
Just lost their violets and forget-me-nots?

Have emerald lawns and woody banks
Forsworn their daisies and
Their shining celandine?

Are woody glades,
Pierced by chance beams,
Dry of bluebell seas?

Because we forget to breathe,

Because we forget to dream,

Because we forget to love,

We forget to see those little golden flies

The lapidary shadows of the afternoon,
Make gems of every tiny leaf.
Shadow stems sway on lawns like Oarweed,
One fathom deep in lazy tides.

An armoured and heraldic bug
Drops on my lap,
Reminding me of what is shared,
Our legs, our eyes, our hearts.

So stay with me,
And hold my hand a while.
Breathe with me,
Of breeze-sent blossom,
Remember the pleasure of the sheltered wall.
Remember how we warmed ourselves,
Because the air seemed chill under the cherry:
Though we needed no excuse,
No reason to look into each other’s eyes.

Could our breath be sweeter, or our hearts fuller
Than now?

Summer is another country, many miles away,
Where they do things strangely,
And they speak another tongue.