Posting about wearing a dress in the middle of winter yesterday made me think about this section of a Robert Hass poem, “Santa Barbara Road,” from Human Wishes:
Everything rises from the dead in June.
There is some treasure hidden in the heart of summer
everyone remembers now, and they can’t be sure
the lives they live in will discover it.
They remember the smells of childhood vacations.
The men buy maps, raffish hats. Some women
pray to it by wearing blouses
with small buttons you have to button patiently,
as if to say, this is not winter, not
the cold shudder of dressing in the dark.
Yeah, I’m getting pretty tired of that cold shudder in the mornings.