Summer is late, my heart.

Reflective surfaces follow me like unpaid bills. The more I avoid mirrors, the louder they knock. Youth! OH, YOUTH! I am in the Winter of my life. Alas, I can only find hope in chickens and the bookshelf.


Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.

Stanley Kunitz