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Writer's pictureWILLIAM HAZEL

At the Speed of Summer

Updated: Jun 15




Where did the summer go

everyone keeps asking

pointing their phones at their faces


hump days and Friday eves

across the called ways of free crooked patched

concrete cracked with the heat of too much

weight and too much speed and too

much everything


accumulated crumbs in the keyboard with the

worn thin e and an a missing a leg up on

the rest with the forty hours turned fifty so

paychecks pile for the firepit glow

stoking a weekend of three like how it started in


a backyard smelling of lilies and a bony robin

death wouldn't give back so he’s resting

in brown dirt that started as black


nights hazed in fleeting horizons hued pink blue

skewed through September as June with

cicadas and decades echoing hard

around fenced squares humid stained

from uncut edges


not tucked tight enough in corners

and all the sheets and the covers she

stole with a slow past midnight roll

that was the fourth, I think, independence signed

by the fifth, I had them, of August that is


the time we’d been around the sun

again

waiting for a moon full bluer than


the ocean we chose to be nearer at

least we stretched on the beach a few

times or was it twice feeding crabs carrots

when the lifeguards lost that little boy that’s

what the mother said it was their job


to scratch the tickles of tall grass

across toes poking front from sandals while

we sipped Trader Joe’s rose in keep it

cold tumblers watching that hummingbird

splash reminding to keep a lid on it all


where did the summer go

everyone keeps asking

pointing their phones at their faces



1. Cover photo design by Author, from a Daoudi Aissa photo, Unsplash.


© Copyright William Hazel, 2023

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