Summer, Fall or Summerfall?©️ by Felina Silver Inspired by my nephew Rich Ward

The photo shared in my poem was found on Shop Fine Art of America, please consider shopping on their site.

We spend Winter
praying for summer.

From behind frosted windows,
from roads glazed with ice,
from mornings that steal feeling
from our hands,
we whisper,
Just let it be warm.

And then it comes.

Not as mercy,
but as a weight.

The days linger
in the gentle lie of the seventies,
while the air itself
burns like one hundred and ten
a fever no wind can break,
a hand that will not lift
from the back of the neck.

How strange,
to beg for the thing
that would one day
drive us from our own porches,
leave the birds silent,
the fields brittle,
the trees holding their breath.

Perhaps
we have been wishing
for the wrong season.

Give me autumn instead.

Give me mornings
that carry the scent of leaves
and the promise of rain.

Give me a sun
that knows restraint.

Give me skies
that do not threaten
with fire disguised as light.

Let the days
never rise beyond seventy-four,
where warmth is kindness,
not punishment,
and the earth remembers
how to breathe.

Take back this relentless heat.

It drinks the rivers.
It peels the green
from every living thing.
It loosens the bones of the land,
softens the soil,
opens old cracks
into waiting mouths.

The ground has learned
the shape of hunger.

And if the heat remains,
it will not merely scorch us.

One day,
quietly,
without anger or warning,