ENDLESS SUMMER

There is a voice I hear between turning pages.
What I’ve not considered or do not understand
I repeat, as if all roads turn back once more.
Spring storms pass their cool showers. Soon,
rains will turn warm and moisture broken
from resolute clouds will seek the air around me.
For now, water will warm and burn away
in furloughed fields, over vapory roads. 
Light today is broken into basic character.
From crystals hung on a chandelier
bands of colors enlarge on my walls.
Memory descends whenever a man turns to a woman.
Over distance any light decreases.
Geese trumpet over fields fresh with morning dew.
In their song are poor marshes like dirt roads.
Streets pass through town as if singing
or gusts from sudden wings turn back to a beginning.
There is a voice I hear from the beginning,
before I worked with my hands, machine-carved fields
where geese lapse to winter, when I remember
the dampness of virgin clay and dad’s rumpled ashtray.
Fallow lands repose before planting, with sounds
never heard again. That earth crumples easily now.
Though sliced with the edge of a steel blade
I no longer see the faces in a room with many children.