Is It Not Midsummer?

90s most of the day, 80s all night

meteorologists make no mention of

cooling thunderstorms midafternoon

this here up-&-eve country where

if you don’t work outside in early morning

you’re not likely to work outside at all

6 am on the bicycle, lights fore & aft

raccoon posse zigzags across the road

one large, three small marauders

the same, I’ll guess, who nibble my compost

overnight & why shouldn’t they? 

redbirds swoop from tree to hedge to lawn

a bat shaves my eyebrows, foxes

a pair, necks & tails long, noses

reconnoitering, middle of road converse

stare piercingly toward me, wheel & lope

for swampy brush, they disappear

faster than I can see, overhead

woodstorks, like giant flying commas

soar south & west, water birds

aim away from the rising sun

snug in trees song birds trill

woken, the great blue heron rasps

mist the height of a wolf, top of a pole

a black vulture, out too early

something disturbed it, movie folk

as many as 25 vehicles rutting

two fields for most of the summer, go

away, intruders, blood red burn

the sun rises, looms navel orange

three red trucks in one driveway

smell of cut grass, mud, morning

Iceland

by Eugenio Montejo

Iceland, so this is how you keep your distance,

your icy mists, your fjords

where people speak in dialects of ice.

Iceland so close to the Pole,

purified by nights

of suckling whales.

Iceland sketched in my journal,

illusion and sorrow (or vice versa).

Could anything be more dire than this desire

to take myself to Iceland and chant your sagas,

tramp your salty fogs?

My country’s sun

burns so,

it makes me dream of your winters.

This equatorial riddle

of searching for snow

that holds heat in its heart

& doesn’t wither the leaves of cedars.

I’ll never make it to Iceland. It’s very far.

So many degrees below zero.

I’ll fold the map to feel closer.

I’ll glaze your fjords with forests of palm.

— translated by Carol Peters