Summertime, the Year’s Reward   Summertime, the year’s reward — is this what we were waiting for?   Bruised and bored and beaten, we stumble from the iron house of winter — some come sadly, some come blindly, what we did and what we meant to   Summertime, the year’s reward — is this what we were waiting for?   We stumble toward the arms of spring, unripe and unready, hopeful, unsteady, alive to life, to everything — what was whispered, what was said   Summertime, the year’s reward — is this what we were waiting for?   What was said was soon forgotten summer magic mystifies the slate is clean, the circle hot and pulsing green, a tarnished prize   Summertime, the year’s reward — is this what we were waiting for?   Who loves the prize of tarnished light, the sad satisfactions of the fall? What we meant to, what we might become, first big and later small   Summertime, the year’s reward — is this what we were waiting for?     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont August 2017