Summer

A road of dirt and stone

lies half under trees' shade.

Dust curtains sun,

blights flower, dulls leaf sheen.

Heavy, heavy the scent

of honeysuckle, heavy as rain.

Its sweetness falls

honey-thick on sense.

It dampens the dust down.

Paul Lake

From Another Kind of Travel,

The University of Chicago Press,

© 1988.  Reprinted by permission

of the author.