Digging through old poems again, I found this one I wrote about five years ago. Decided to pair it with a photo from a year or two before, from summer vacation in France.

---

Winged summer, come to take me away
In angelic grip, in cloudless swoop above the fields
Whether in a night or in a day, I think I'll find
The view from above to be lovely,
When cool winged summer comes.

What is not to be expected is this:
That where the season takes me,
Over the fields and far away,
May not be exactly where I hope,
May not be the place of my silk-shrouded dreams—
That it should be any other is what is unexpected,
Surely; that it is someplace elsewhere is a shock.

Yet when star-guided summer—
Guided in day or night, by the gleam or gleams
Of the stars we see but do not think about—
When star-guided summer lets me down
In my new home, my eyes shall open,
And I shall see for the first time
The beauty of the world;
O winged summer, you have taught me
What it is
To know.

---