The Exquisite Writing of Hal Borland

"Summer is misted dawns and searing afternoons, hot days, warm nights, thunderstorms cracking their writhing whips. Summer is shirt sleeves, sunburn, bathing suits, tall cold drinks, dazzling beaches and shimmering lakes. Summer is the green countryside, the cool fragrance of mountain pines.

Summer is the house wren bubbling over with morning song. It is the long afternoon aquiver with the sibilance of the cicada. It is slow dusk freckled with fireflies - and prickly with mosquitoes. Summer is a meadowful of daisies, a field of corn reaching for the sun, a straw hat, a hoe and a garden.

Summer is the fresh garden pea, new lettuce crisp in the salad bowl, snap beans, sun-ripe raspberries on the bush and chilled strawberries in a bowl of cream. Summer is the weed, the gnawing insect, the foraging woodchuck, the nibbling rabbit. Summer is sweat.

Summer is April and May grown into June and July, the green world working almost eighteen hours a day. It is a lazy river and a languishing brook. It is a vacation dreamed of, realized, too soon over and done, too soon a memory.

Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January."

~Excerpt from Sundial of the Seasons, by Hal Borland - I absolutely recommend it.