Summer, Like the Body

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POETRY

Summer, like the body,

bends slowly

toward its end.

You feel it

in the first chilled night

when you pull the sheets

tight across

your autumn shoulders,

and the rasp

of the fox’s cry

cuts the cold, solitary dark.

You feel in your bones

the gray gravity

of late August clouds,

hanging like omens

over summer’s bloom.

You hear in the scree

of south-bound geese

some kindred keening

welling up in you,

bending you toward winter,

but telling you

you will not break.

Dr Pies is professor emeritus of psychiatry and a lecturer on bioethics and humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York; a clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts; and editor in chief emeritus of Psychiatric Times™ (2007-2010). He is the author of several books. A collection of his works can be found on Amazon.