print previewback NATHANIEL PERRY
June
And we’re past the solstice now, sliding
back towards fall, summer
as much a descent as anything else.
You know fall has its number
when spiders start webbing up the paths
in the woods, and we’ve just gotten used
to the fattening day when the evening begins
to get slimmer and the light’s confused
about how exactly it should shine,
the pale blackberry yellow
of exposition, or the flat-blade gold
of a story’s end, the glow
of a coda’s familiar opening words.
And then there’s the birds: arrivals
and departures check the screen
in summer’s terminal
and while they wait they fill the fields
and the flowerheads looking for food.
Buntings are pilot lights in the wheat;
woodpeckers arming the woods
with their endless wild alarm. Soon
the poplars will drop their flares,
first leaves to yellow and test the wind,
and every year I share
in the ground’s surprise: how could it be
this time already, how
did we get to these days without my knowing?
And what I ought to do now
is take notes or something, make a list
to help prepare me better
for next year’s turn, use language, I mean,
as a guide, a watchful letter
to myself. Oh no. This is sounding familiar.
Is that what I’ve been doing
here this whole long time, trying
to teach myself something
about myself or about myself
in the ambivalent world
around me? Is it a warning? All
my fancy talk, purled
and fringed with images and rhyme
and all that? I can’t read
my own code if that’s the case or even
validate my need
to document summer’s war against
itself and the aster’s winking
blueish eyes which close at night
in honor of our sinking. 
June (The rain is falling in veils)
June (We’re waiting for our dog to die)
June (I dug the hole and the dog watched)
June (I realize now in last week’s poem)
June (And we’re past the solstice now)