-This poem opens Book II by entering the dense central heat of summer, where stillness, brightness, and bodily presence take on a heavier intensity.
By noon the yard has lost its shade,
the boards burn pale beneath the sun,
the air stands thick above the grass,
and every leaf holds still in heat.
The garden keeps its brighter green,
but under it the soil runs dry,
while somewhere past the fence and road,
the fields begin to shimmer white.
No breeze arrives to stir the porch,
no cloud leans down to ease the sky,
just this long weight of light and fire,
laid over roof, and vine, and stone.
And still the day does not grow cruel,
it only asks the body now,
to feel how summer fills its frame,
with all the force of being here.