Editor’s Note: A lot of alliteration and chewy words to please the ear in this praise poem to many people’s favorite but all-too-brief season.
Feast
I love the fat of summer, flabby
green weeks when weeds lap
over the vague rims of back
roads, just as batter overtakes
a griddle. Poplar leaves wave
wide as cows’ tongues slurping
syrup-thick air. Here, summer spits
when it talks, gulps cold milk
and wipes a hand across its mouth.
I want to stuff myself full
with warm fields, hills tender
and round as yeast rolls bathed
in butter. Oh to scoop the ooze
of June’s soft eggs, consume
this season, lick its juices, chew
those salty bacon days,
until autumn clears
my plate.
Jane Edna Mohler is the 2020 Bucks County Poet Laureate (PA), winner of the 2016 Main Street Voices. She placed second in the 2023 Crossroads Contest. Recent publications include Gargoyle, One Art, and Verse Virtual. Her collection, Broken Umbrellas, was published by Kelsay Books. Her second, Autumn Clears, is just out. Mohler is the poetry editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. www.janeednamohler.com. Her poem, “Feast,” appeared in ONE ART: a journal of poetry (September 23, 2023) and is published here with the author’s permission.
