Summertime

We had peaches last night and again this morning, and I expect we’ll have peaches at lunch. One of my husband’s students brought us two bags full of the luscious fruit, and even though we gave some to friends, there are still more than plenty for us. Not that I’m complaining. Good fruit is just one of summer’s generous gifts. Another one (you knew this was coming) is possibility after possibility for poems. Here’s one from my chapbook The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, published in 2019 by The Poetry Box:

Women in Their Summer Hats

Sally Zakariya

Broad brims shield their indoor faces from summer sun and my eyes, but I know these women or women like them. Past young but still nowhere near old, they congregate in like-minded groups to walk the weight off after lunch. Arrayed in summer-flower colors, water bottles at the ready, they’re two abreast, a group of six in ritual procession down the street. They cut a wide swath through the crowd, brims wielding a circular sort of clout-- not the gentle sway of garden party straw but the firm authority of early cardinals’ wide-brimmed red hats. At a busy corner, one pauses to assess the traffic, raises her hand in a gesture of seeming benediction, then dips her head, her hat’s flat disk angled sharp against the sun. I picture the six of them spinning away-- plates on a celestial juggler’s sticks, their conversation spiraling in prayer.

Of course, not everything about summer is positive. In my earlier chapbook When You Escape, for example, I wrote about a disturbing encounter with a possible pedophile the summer I was nine. Sure, I also have poems about the usual summer topics--birds, flowers, sky, dreams. But when I think of everything I’ve written about this season, the peaches win the day. Here’s an unpublished poem on the same:

A Summer of Peaches

Sally Zakariya

Each week he brings a bag full white freestone, yellow cling their perfume wafting its way up to heaven Peaches and cream, peach pie cobbler, shortbread--we eat so many peaches I fear my skin will fuzz We throw the pits out back half imagining an orchard there someday--meanwhile there’s the farm stand, boundless cornucopia Late summer, peaches know what’s coming--small, bruised fruit and less of it to savor but still sweet

What are you writing about summer?