6.20.2026 – summer when the lungs

summer when the lungs
of the earth take a long breath
I look for you

Do you know how the dream looms?

how if summer misses one of us the two of us miss summer –

Summer when the lungs of the earth take a long breath for the change to low contralto singing mornings when the green corn leaves first break through the black loam-

And another long breath for the silver soprano melody of the moon songs in the light nights when the earth is lighter than a feather, the iron mountains lighter than a goose down-

So I shall look for you in the light nights then, in the laughter of slats of silver under a hill hickory.

In the listening tops of the hickories, in the wind motions of the hickory shingle leaves, in the imitations of slow sea water on the shingle silver in the wind –

I shall look for you.

Silver Wind by Carl Sandburg as published in Smoke and Steel in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950).

On the beach today.

In the listening tops of the hickories, in the wind motions of the hickory shingle leaves, in the imitations of slow sea water on the shingle silver in the wind.

I look for you.

But you took the picture.

BTW, recently talked with my sister who had the opportunity to spend some time on the Gulf of MEXICO and on the Lake Michigan shore.

She noticed that in going to the Gulf to swim, the water was always warm … every day … you could count on it.

On Lake Michigan, the question every day if not every hour is, how does the water feel right now?

A stiff north wind and the water on the beach on Lake Michigan can go from 70s to 60s in a matter of hours.

Today for me, the water was 82.

The air was in the high 80s.

It will be that way all summer long.

And another long breath for the silver soprano melody of the moon song.