These Summer Days

This garden we fill with seeds
pushing radishes and peas
into fresh brown earth

These books we replace
on the brimming shelves.
These tomatoes we slice and throw
into salad bowls

This table with cloth straightened
and vase of lavender lilacs
tenderly picked by small hands

This postcard addressed to
a far away brother
and the clouds flowing across
the top of the horizon.

This morning's cup of
steaming tea
and the dog that is begging
for a walk and attention.

These days that roll on
in the same slightly different
manner of the ones before.

Turn right off the highway
and onto the dirt road, then
take the first left.

Down the dusty hill and left again.
Keep going. Just before the next hill
there's another road. Take it.

Your life moves on like
this winding road

Go past the sagging house
with the empty windows and on to
the next house, just across the
irrigation canal
where poplar trees brace
against the wind
and sunflowers grow in the corn.

It's the face in the window
that waves and disappears
the door that flies open
the people who love you
that have been waiting.