It isn’t summer for another month, but it only takes a few hot days and things growing in the garden to put me into summer mode. Today I was lying on the couch outside in the Sun, feeling lazy and feeling good, and thinking about this poem by James Wright where he is “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.”
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
by James Wright, from his Collected Poems
Weekends in Paradelle 