Long Island Summers

LONG ISLAND SUMMERS

I’d go back

for just a moment,

perhaps as long

as one day and a night,

enough, I think,

to relish again

Long Island summers...

Scents of ragweed, seared grasses,

almost-too-sweet roses

in the heavy summer air…

Glittering waters,

hot, hot sand and tiny shells

hiding in the drying seaweed

margin of the tide…

Early mornings

sun like a glowing peach

soft-lit hazy cool ’til nearly 10,

and thunderstorms some afternoons

that slammed and bruised the air

to break the back

of humid heat’s oppression…

Cicada-noisy nights,

lit here and there by sudden silent sparks

of spectral yellow, green

and random

like imaginings or magic,

to be captured briefly

in a jar--

It’s the fireflies I miss the most…