Summer’s Days are Numbered

Then the LORD of Hosts
told His Chosen People
to get over it already.

And my friend’s mom did just that.
Her face lit up with joy,
for the first time in decades,

because the undetected early onset Alzheimer’s
had erased half the entries
in that hateful little Naughty List

she’d been prayerfully paging through,
daily, for longer
than she could remember.

Same thing happened to Señor Smartypants,
earlier on today, at John Abbott College,
whilst he was waiting in line for the 405 bus.

His face lit up with joy,
for the first time in weeks,
because it was a warm day in April,

and he’d forgotten how good
sunlight can feel
on your face.

He closed his eyes and stared at the sun,
wondering at the apocalyptic,
blood-orange color of eyes wide shut.

Is this what Lot’s wife saw,
before a jealous God,
with a mean streak as long as the Jordan,

turned her into a pillar of salt?
Did He see red when she saw blood-orange memories
of a sinful Sodom she’d grown to love?

WE WILL NEVER FORGET
and GET OVER IT
are easier said than done, LORD.

And the life
of a wandering Jew
isn’t for everyone.

Can you really fault her
for wanting to put down
some roots?

Can you really fault her
for falling
for Sin City?

Maybe, like 70-year-old Socrates,
she just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving.
Maybe she was willing to drink her hemlock

to make a statement: about disobedient wives,
the importance of place,
and loyalty to lost causes.

Maybe, like Machiavelli,
she loved her native city
more than her own salty soul.

Maybe we have to forget it all,
the pleasures and pains
of the past,

if we wish to really enjoy
our brief moment
in the sun.

Oh Joseph, Joseph, favored son of Israel,
there are times when I see
why he loved you best,

why he spoiled you rotten,
why he indulged your every whim,
threw caution to the wind,

and dropped a deuceload of denaros
on that overpriced coat:
you know, the colorful one,

that got you into all that trouble:
the one you found on eBay
and simply had to have.

Oh Joseph, Joseph, favored son of Israel:
there are times when I find myself reading you
as you really ought to be read at all times:

slowly and carefully,
with the sympathetic ears
Jesus had in mind

when he cryptically declared:
“He that hath ears to hear,
let him hear.”

It’s then, and only then,
that I get a glimpse,
a glorious glimpse,

of who you really are.
I treasure these moments,
these moments when you tip your hand,

because they remind me
of how much I get you, Joseph.
And, as you well know,

getting someone
is almost as great
as getting got.

Behind that adorable boyish façade of innocence,
behind your effortless small-town decency,
and your refusal to succumb to cheap cynicism

(which the dimwitted
invariably mistake
for naïveté),

lurks an Old World darkness,
a decidedly unAmerican fatalism,
and a sadness:

the sadness of a broken man,
a man who caught a glimpse of something
he wasn’t supposed to see,

something terrible and tragic,
intractable and inevitable,
at the very heart of human existence.

Yours is the inconsolable sadness
of a melancholy man
who stubbornly refuses to forget

how sweet it was
to believe in Santa Claus:
a man who nevertheless refuses,

at one and the same time,
to succumb to the siren song of ideology,
or the comforting myths of modernity:

a man who refuses to fill
that Santa-shaped hole
with any of its grownup analogs.

And yet, despite all of this,
you get up everyday and devote yourself
to your wife, your children, and your work,

in the full knowledge
that it probably won’t amount to anything
but dust and ashes in the end.

Shall I play Adam in the Garden, friend,
and call this virtuous beast
by its rightful name?

Very well then:
Her name
is Heroism.

A shy, understated version
of the virtue,
to be sure,

that feels no burning need
to “let it shine”
or advertise on LinkedIn.

Even so, I know what’s under
that bushel of yours, friend.
I’ve seen its warm glow,

and recognized its honey light:
it’s the light of a golden afternoon
in late August, an afternoon abuzz

with the sweet skyward songs
of an angelic army,
a heavenly host of winged insects,

sent from on high to belt out
summer’s sumptuous symphony,
its soulful swansong,

which tells the truth
about the Janus-faced nature
of these late summer days.

In this garden of earthly delights,
this golden green afternoon,
an afternoon whose cup runneth over,

an afternoon spilling over with life,
an afternoon that feels
like it could go on forever one moment;

and yet, a mere moment later,
the very air seems pregnant
with the poison-apple knowledge

of a forbidden tree.
It’s not The Tree of Knowledge, mind you,
the one that gets all the press,

the one made famous
by the authors of Genesis.
It’s a lesser-known tree of knowledge:

born and raised, this side of Paradise,
on the wrong side of the tracks,
far from the shadow of grace:

a world-weary version
of his famous cousin
who grew up

on the mean streets and favelas
that ring The Garden of Eden,
God’s very first gated community.

He can’t tell you much
about platonic abstractions
like Good and Evil.

But he knows a great deal
about this fallen world we call home.
Today, however, he’s got but one

sad secret to share:
“Summer’s days are numbered, friend;
Summer’s days are numbered.”

To feel the full weight
of your own rapidly approaching death
in the midst of this throbbing festival of life

is always, it seems,
just a little bit more
than he can handle.

The morbid knowledge weighs on him,
as it weighs on you
at times.

Perhaps this is why
his tastiest fruits
are always hanging

so low to the ground.
Perhaps this is why
he never plays hard to get.

And perhaps this is why,
despite your shyness, dignity, and reticence,
you strive for clarity and shun obscurity.

I see it clearly now, perhaps for the first time:
you wish to be understood, truly understood.
And known.

Very well then, friend.
Tell me everything.
I’d like the long version.

—John Faithful Hamer, Social Distancing (2020)