Oh no, another poem about the bittersweet melancholy of knowing summer will end! This time, it’s in sonnet form, which makes me think I should read more formalist poetry.
The Last Warm Saturday
by Jane Greer
The last warm Saturday, the final mowing —
that drone, that fragrance — with the traitor sun
low-angled, making all this not quite right.
Here is a bitter yearly winnowing
of what’s to come from what is in decline,
parsed in the language of the changing light.
I know this language but I cannot speak it.
I learned it from my senses, over time.
It warms me and it makes me cold and mute.
In trying to express its deepest secret,
all I can mumble is its paradigm:
that loss and bliss come from the same root.