And finally, a last summer poem . . .

Sometimes on the Porch in Summer

 

          by William Trowbridge

As the sun begins to settle down for dusk

and the Methodist Church carillon nags again

toward the final bars of “Oh, My Soul,”

two cicadas tune up overhead in the maple

that started shoulder high to our oldest

and now shades half the house till noon.

It’s too late for new business, too early

for the nightly bacchanal at the frat house

down the street. The neighborhood’s on pause,

and so are we, waiting for another page

to turn, for our youngest to get back

from his paper route, for the roast to cook.

 

One cicada tries a few fast licks,

the other answers, then there’s almost silence:

a radio plays from the pink apartment house

that blocks our view, a pickup rumbles past,

a dog barks in the distance. For a moment,

time falters, the great gears disengage,

and nearly every yard becomes angelic

in this hush of deepening green, where sprinklers

catch the evening light and toss it back,

where the nighthawks tuck their wings and plunge.

 

Bill Trowbridge (b. 1941) was the Missouri Poet Laureate from 2012 – 2016. He has published many books and won numerous prizes, and teaches now in the University of Nebraska’s low-residency MFA in writing program, where your newsletter editor had the great pleasure of studying with him. He lives in Lee’s Summit, MO, and lists his interests as “reading, travel, motorcycling, wine tasting, fine dining, and trying to keep the damn rabbits out of the hibiscus.”