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Column 071

August Morning

Intro by Ted Kooser
08.09.2006

William Car­los Williams, one of our country’s most influ­en­tial poets and a New Jer­sey physi­cian, taught us to cel­e­brate dai­ly life. Here Albert Gar­cia offers us the sim­ple plea­sures and mod­est mys­ter­ies of a sin­gle sum­mer day. 

August Morning

It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © by Albert Garcia from his latest book “Skunk Talk” (Bear Starr Press, 2005) and originally published in “Poetry East,” No. 44. Reprinted by permission of the author. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.