"Summer's Last Hurrah"

Oh summer's gone a weeping

Dry tears to the end of her days

Oh summer's not sung the song

Of sweet rain and happy ways

She’s gone for the pure sunlight

Falling in love once again

For summer’s fickle heart

Dried up the tears of rain

And so the stream ran empty

The field turned brown her doors

While mountains looked down proud

On wilting foothills and floors

But now her length of days

Have wasted complete away

Now she knows she has no time

On this closing summer day

She looks upward to the sun

But summer has no tears to cry

No comfort from the sunlit rays

For sunlight’s rays are dry

So summer gives us one last day

To bid her leaves good-bye

One last day to wait for autumn

Her one last chance to cry

But summer's gone a weeping

Dry tears for her dear June

The warming rays of sunlight’s love

Have melted away too soon

This was our summer. Drought and fires. Heat and dry fields. No mercy. I know it is sad and sounds too cruel for a poem. But I wanted to remember this summer, for all its hardships. And I wanted to look back and smile upon it someday. To thank it. For the beauty in the coarse and brittle grass stems and the red suns through a haze of smoke, for the making of art of something frightening and scary. For the rippling of heat waves on the road that make you think of oceans. For cool lakes and sunburns turning your skin pink. For the fear because it makes God so much more real. All is grace.

Love, Kayla