Hold hands with me as we gallop through
a velvet field of summer. 
All the popping-up-flowers, in crayon colors.
Periwinkle, cornflower, or dusty blue 
is chicory, the daisy of sidewalk’s edge.
Purple are clover, and vetch, 
growing in bunches in the verges.
Yellow buttercup shows up too,
and pale pink bindweed, morning glories
of neon plum, climb trellises, telling their story
of courtship with the sun.

By midday, we are wet with sweating 
and must keep drinking water for hydration.
Nighttime is soggy. Heavy with the day’s heat 
and humidity. Fan will be whirring at bedside,
blankets kicked off, maybe a towel laid down 
over the pillow. 
Caresses are sticky. Dreams hazy, taking us
kayaking through lily pads in turtled emerald ponds.

---

Author’s note: I wanted to get the feeling of thickness and richness that is the lush heaviness of hot summer days. I have a daily walking route, so am very aware of season’s plants-of-the-moment. Loving the shade of chicory took me to those particular crayons I loved as a child—cornflower, magenta, bronze, silver, gold, pine green. My second stanza quite literally describes this heat wave we’re in but then ends back in the hazy dreamy feeling of floating through thick water, rich with life both on its surface, and below.

Marjorie Moorhead’s books are What I Ask, and Every Small Breeze. Chapbooks, In My Locket, Survival: Tees, Tides, Song and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees. Forthcoming, Into the Thrum (2025). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals as well as sixteen anthologies to date. Marjorie writes from NH/VT.