“Under the sun the summer grasses fade.
The rose, expiring after the harsh ravage
Of the heat, languishes toward the shade.
Sleep drips from the foliage.”

“Tis the last rose of Summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.”

“It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.”

“Her sentences march under a harsh sun that bleaches color from them but bestows a peculiar, invigorating, Pascalian clarity.”

“Then soon with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well.”

“Summer — summer — summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass!”

“Suddenly, as the sun rose, the poem flew without an owner, while he faded away like a fiction called a “story.””

“The sun, heavy-eyed from lack of sleep, owing to the system of a staggered summer time, stumbled into the heavens, and with a heavy sigh set about its duties.”

“Any nose
May ravage with impunity a rose.”

“The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.”