Don’t look now, but we are fast running out of summer dawns. Days when one swaps clothes with a scarecrow. Days when one lie on your back in the grass and talk up the first cloud that passes overhead. I miss such simplicity already.
Still, typing poems you like is good practice for writers. It counts as “close reading” when you type word for word, punctuation for punctuation, and then reread for accuracy. You think things like, “When does this sentence end?” and “Shouldn’t there be a period and not a comma here?” and “Shoot. Wish I’d thought of that!”
Let us hold our collective breath for the last days of summer, then, and turn to Simic, a poet who had a sense for the absurd. A poet from eastern Europe who could appreciate the simple things. A poet who is always worth revisiting.
Summer Dawn
by Charles Simic
Just as the day breaks, it may be time
To slip away on foot
Carrying no belongings,
Leaving even your shoes behind
In some rooming house,
Or wherever you’ve hidden yourself away
To look for another refuge,
Preferring at the moment
The open country, the interstate highway
Empty at this hour,
Or small-town cemeteries, where the birds
In the trees have fallen silent,
The minister has left the church unlocked.
You could enter and rest in its pews,
Or you could wade into a cornfield,
Swap clothes with a scarecrow,
Stretch out on the grass and have a long talk
With the first cloud of the new day.
