Summer Happened

This morning, as dawn’s light peeked over the distant peaks,

    White with winter’s cold reminiscence, summer happened.

Can you imagine?  Without my help or permission, summer happened.

    No one had to waken me.  My bed would not be still; my weary carcass refused rest.

In the darkened quiet of night,  a sound, as I thumped my pillow’s cooler side.

    I flounced my way through a turning of seasons.

Summer finally arrived last evening, while I feigned slumber.

Although I do not know for certain, it must have been while I tried to sleep

    That the boys decided to strike up a chorus back home.

Back home, and not where I now live, the male cicada bugs sing on hot summer nights.

    And as they sing,  a warm and nostalgic “something” touches a body’s soul. 

It’s almost as if the night’s music decides to change its tune from one season to the next,

and the cadence of the cicada’s drumming hum slows so summer can come to pass.

The atmosphere around my life warmed to such a degree last evening that 

When the open window next to me breathed a sigh of cool relief, 

My soul stirred in that breeze and that breath of wind.

Not a date on a calendar.  Not some “place” in time.

But a season of change crept into my world this morning, and I knew.

No matter where on God’s green earth a body happens to be, 

    when summer happens,  I think a body always knows.

I know.  By the time its all over, … I’ll be glad its all over.

Glad the long days of summer will shorten.  

Gladder still for wood in the stove, and the smell of oak as it burns and gives warmth.

For now, though, the nights have warmth enough for themselves.

No need for stoves, or wood, or fires to heat nights already hot and days

that are hotter, still.

Instead, now I seek and long for the shade …and wait.

Summer happened last night, without my help or permission.

    Now that it’s here, I can only hope to hear.

Hear more than the sound of a man’s thumping life, flailing some pillowed existence in the dark. 

Hear more than the sound of some lonely song with no words or rhyme or reason.

I wait.  In his shaded and shady place of rest I choose to repose and pause until the gentle wind arrives.

I crane my head toward Heaven’s pane, I stretch my neck and long for that breeze; that Breath of Life, that stirring wind which brings blessed relief from my long

summer nights.

And that sleep that comes only from Him.

“Let the beloved of the LORD rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders.” (Deut. 33:12)