As Summer Shifts Toward Close

“Director’s Notes” are excerpts from our monthly email newsletter, “Stories from the Garden.” Subscribe and see past issues here.

Dear Friends, 

As summer crests beyond its peak, we have been taking some rest before a busy season starts again. Sonnet is away this month, so I—Nina Peláez, the Merwin Conservancy’s Associate Director—am writing to you in her stead. 

These past weeks, alongside longer days and with exciting work ahead of us, I have frequently found myself drawn deep into books, paging through William’s poems. Each time, something different reaches out to me, and I find new surprises, even in work encountered before. Lately, perhaps because of the time of year, I have been especially struck by the many pieces William wrote about summertime, envisioned across the places he cherished.

Just this morning, I found myself enthralled by William’s “Season,” which opens:

This hour along the valley this light at the end
of summer lengthening as it begins to go
this whisper in the tawny grass this feather floating
in the air this house of half a life or so
this blue door open to the lingering sun this stillness
echoing from the rooms like an unfinished sound…

Reciting his lyric enumeration aloud to myself, as the early sun rose above the trees, felt almost like an incantation. I feel this often with William’s words, which unspool the threads of memory, always weaving exquisitely between shadow and light. 

In these weeks before summer shifts toward its close, I offer you a selection of some poems I have found myself reading and rereading lately and the lines that especially stood out to me. I invite you to spend time with them and, if you are inclined, to read them aloud to yourself or a loved one. Most of all, I hope you will find respite and delight in these words born of this season, wherever you may be. We would love to hear which resonate with you and what else you might be turning to as our days begin to shorten again. 

“Before Midsummer Above the River” from The Moon Before Morning (2014)

Ghosts of words
circle the empty room
where I was young
stars in daylight…

“Summer” from The Drunk in the Furnace (1960), and Migration: New & Selected Poems (2005)

…Bird-sleep, moonset,
Island after island,
Be of their hush…

“A Summer Night” from Travels (1993) and Migration: New & Selected Poems (2005)

…so long I have known this that it seems to me
to be mine it has been gone for so long
that I think I have carried it with me
without knowing it was there in the daytime…

“Summer Doorway” from The Compass Flower (1977)

…I come to the door quickly to surprise you
but you laugh we laugh you run toward me
under the long skirt your feet are bare…

“Early One Summer,” from Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment (1973) and Migration: New & Selected Poems (2005)

…these are the days
when the beetles hurry through dry grass
hiding pieces of light they have stolen

With aloha,

Nina