Summer’s First Day Poem by Hal Caufield

Life without you is death,
Not the everlasting peaceful quietus,
But that which makes cowards of us all.

Life without you is slings and arrows,
Heart-ache, a thousand natural shocks
Whips and scorn, wrong, contumely,
Pangs, delay, insolence and spurns.
It is Quasimodo chain to the stake,
With no hope of soul quenching water.
It is the burns of a thousand cigarettes,
Of knowing you sleep in the arms of another.

Life without you is Summer’s first day,
With its cacophony of color and light,
A cornucopia of the sun’s blissful rays for all,
Without a hue or a fardel of hope cast for me.