Issue Thirty-Five - Winter 2020

Summer Ghazal

By Susan J. Erickson

Neruda called watermelon the green whale of summer.
Sprinkled with salt, I call it the holy grail of summer.

Driving the farm-to-market road to the cancer clinic
for your last visit, let us praise each hay bale of summer.

August. It is hot in the yoga studio today.
At svanasana, practice the slow exhale of summer.

This city has more breweries per capita than Seattle,
making it easy to find a superb pale ale for summer.

Above Zuanich Park, what looks like Jack’s beanstalk,
turns out to be the longest kite’s tail of summer.

“There is no time for despair” said Toni Morrison.
It is time, Susan, to ride the contrail of summer.

Copyright 2020 Erickson

Susan J. Erickson ’s collection of poems in women’s voices, "Lauren Bacall Shares a Limousine," won the Brick Road Poetry Prize. Susan lives in Bellingham, Washington, where she helped establish the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Walk and Contest. Her poems appear in Rattle, Crab Creek Review, Verse Daily, Sliver of Stone, The Fourth River and Terrain.

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