BY JOHN DONLAN

John Donlan is a poetry editor with Brick Books. Copyright held by the author.

End of July, trees call it a season
shut down their green workshops and let them rust.
Bumper cars in water dimples, whirligig
beetles zoom and carom, rippling moonlight.

The Perseids are singing their fire songs
as they streak our black stadium, burning up
into atoms of atmosphere.
Crickets begin, and a thousand insect voices

(scraping legs are a voice), and deer mice trill
high urgent love calls from the trees.
On an out-flung arm of the Milky Way
we wonder what to do and what to say

from our lush life, so postmodern, so free
to equal their conviction, their necessity.
Long past moonset we lie outside and listen
and stare up into the star-hazy night.