Summer

Summer

Getting away from it all involved an endless drive

in the station wagon, surfboards held down by bungee cords,

children restricted by seatbelts, vinyl sticking to your thighs

as everyone played, “I spy with my little eye

something beginning with …” and whatever it was, inside

or outside the car, would hang in the air like the promise

of January. The airless back seat, the summer heat, a rolling

queasiness you try to ignore until the inevitable lurch

off the road, followed by your mother’s claim

that one always feels better after a good vomit.

The blue-green lines on brilliant white paper are too perfect

and close together to imitate the sets of waves that break

as you duck-dive under them, paddling a seven foot gun

that you struggle to ride, unlike the grommets who rise

on the glassy precipice then slide down the face

like trapeze artists working without a net, each cut-

back and aerial re-entry leaving a trail of whitewash,

a transitory monument to the imagination

that comes from long days spent in a moving canyon

of water. There isn’t a word that captures the joy

of summer, just as there’s no word to precisely convey

the smell of hot chips and vinegar as it floats up

from the newspaper-wrapped parcel that you’re sharing

with your brother as you lie in the shade of a Norfolk pine.

It’s difficult to evoke the refreshing bitterness of cold beer

or the majesty of the view from the pub on the promontory,

where you notice how the sea is awash with bright tinsel

and how the coasters stick to the bottom of a glass

in much the same way that rubber thongs cling

to your sweaty feet. There is far too much nostalgia

in poetry and art in general, the sepia snapshots

of beach picnics and Johnson’s baby oil, when a suntan

was not something you sprayed on, but something

you acquired by lying flat on your back, without skin cancer

or the hole in the ozone layer ever crossing your mind.

You stay in the surf as long as possible, hanging five

while your father stands in the shallows and waves you in.

You develop a healthy respect for the awesome thundering

power of the sea, that word awesome! that you now drop

into the conversation whenever you want to sound

like a teenager, like you know, someone who can’t speak

in sentences, but like, still manages to express what it’s like,

you know—how the surf can hurl you anywhere,

hold you down, even drown you if you treat it

with the disdain of an inebriated tourist

wading out into a rip on a deserted beach and trusting

to luck and magnanimous nature. Not a risk

you would take yourself, it’s enough to simply walk

into the kitchen and make coffee in the stovetop pot

and hope that you don’t lose the flow. Occasionally

you become so lost in the grit and gyprock of words

that you completely forget the bubbling brew,

until the coffee boils away, the plastic handle melts,

the percolator is ruined. But not today, today

you will sip the viscous brown gold in an espresso cup

glazed with a detail of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night,

the yellow stars impossibly large in the paintbrush sky.

A pity that such clever merchandising never helped Vincent,

you think, and then, how all art is made from other art.

Even reading, a friend said, is simply a training session

for writers, without the perspiration, the hamstring strains,

the gasping for air and the twinkling endorphins

that illuminate the mind. Later, when you stroll out

along the boardwalk you watch a sea eagle leave its perch

and soar over the sheltered mudflats, the narrow channel

and the man-made breakwater with its large granite boulders

and concrete tors, until you lose the eagle somewhere in the distance.

Poets are always searching for how things might fit together,

the tongue and groove illusion, the Fibonacci sequence

that can be found in both nature and the sonnet,

which is only a fourteen line form because of the superstition

attached to thirteen. Whatever. A radical attention to the world

leaves much that cannot be understood, let alone described.

No matter the facility with language or craft. The stingray

propels itself over the sandy bottom as if it is a badly-laid rug,

the sea eagle returns to a lofty branch. As you watch,

you wonder if some other Vincent will ever place

this great white bird on the side of an espresso cup,

the fluid beauty of its outstretched wings, its mastery lifting

your heart as the steam envelopes your face and you drink.

Andy Kissane