I write my best poems in August.
My birth month protects me.
Surrounded by smoldering late-summer air,
I travel up the still-green hills to inspiration.
At the top of the hill, all of them are standing there,
poems I wrote in early August, two thousand thirteen
or late August, two thousand twenty two.
A thousand meditations in the vast air.
There they are, holding on to the final sigh
of the poem that was going to be perfect. I wonder if they knew
what they would be? And how, later, I would see them together,
escaping the great pain August made I felt was planned by you.
Is the terror of love safe in collections? Did I ruminate enough?
You didn’t plan anything. I felt you did.
A grownup woman of grownup sighing. A random, sighing kid.
Of the hills and lost in them. Keith the ego, Mick the super ego, Brian, the id.
I can be all that and more! Nothing will overthrow this.
Approaching me through the trees, my poems of August.