Summer (1988) Poem by Laurence de B Anderson

On the open day
of grass and trees
Cic-cic-cicada
jack-hammers his summer
in steel ripples on the ear,
in hard bright writing
round the shadows and back
across the short brown grass
and back
a hammered pool of wires
in the winking, insect eye
of afternoon.

I will not forget how the lawn burned
and lit everything except the pond's own sky,
or how the deck chair seemed a shadow of its shadow,
and so were we, the clothes taken off by our shadows,
and set against the day's hot space.