Something almost summer

I have wanted to use this image on the blog for a long time because I like the simplicity of it.

I made it so long ago that I don't remember whether that is gold paint or digital shimmer.

So here it is tonight, with another poem from Robert Francis.

I am midway into his memoirs, The Trouble With Francis 

and enjoying it very much. He has taken the title from a sentence 

from an article on his poetry in the Chicago Review, Summer, 1967,

"The trouble with Francis is not

that he's too happy as that his

happiness seems to lack weight."

which he uses as an epigraph for his book.

It totally gives me the giggles and makes me never want to publish anything,

Bluejays

Always I hear the bluejays

These early autumn blue days,

Taunting the leaves to hurry,

Wanting the snow to flurry,

Wanting a blue-white weather

To match their blue-white feather.

All right, all right, I'm willing

and far, far more than willing.

But leave me a few days longer

to satisfy my hunger

For something almost summer

After the end of summer,

When the quiet mind goes gleaning

For odds and ends of meaning

Before the year's transition,

Before the mind's submission.

Then let the jays come screaming

And jar me from my dreaming.

Robert Francis
Collected Poems, 1936-1938,
University of Massachusetts Press, 1976, page 150.

And now, for the more literal-minded, here are Eastern Blue Jays

at my feeder in Northern Michigan in September, 2014.

                                                     jhh