When the sun came out it hardly mattered
with the wildfire smoke and clouds
and cloying mood that comes
from late summer days
you’ve seen enough of:

No, the sun was going under,
swallowed and swollen, buried
by messy, careless hands
who’d never known it
or cared to.

August would die without me by its bedside
and I’d make the same mistake
I do every year, to suffer
out of sheer boredom with the season—
to favor a cold stranger
for the novelty of something new
but only regret it, longing
for a new year and the promise
of remaking myself,
forgetting the way
the same as before.

Categories: identity, poetry

Tags: pacific northwest, poem, poetry, summer poem, William Pearse writer