Summer is chaos
Just ask the tulip tree or the late spring garden
As we drove further and further south, back to Ann Arbor a week ago from the Leelanau Peninsula, I realized I was dreading summer. The week prior, it had felt like early spring again. How happy I was huddled in flannel and wool, sun glinting off the lake, days slowed down, and the details of daily life left behind. Doesn’t everyone want to leave chaos when they go on vacation? Even nature felt in place on the lakeshore, wild sarsaparilla twining cozily around bloodroot near the old swing set, as if they were planted there together by the old-time resort’s first owners. But there, poison ivy also freely spurted in clumps on the edges, beginning its reign, just waiting for a child to fall into the bank trying to catch a frisbee. As if to say, wait, summer is coming!
Maybe it is the European blood in me, but the unrestrained growth of nature is sometimes hard for me to bear. A slow creep of foreboding welcomed me home. A few weeks away from the summer equinox, I was counting the weeding I need to do, inspecting plants showing signs of fungal attack, insect damage. What had died or withered without me? Why hadn’t I prioritized care of the vegetable garden, those early plantings? I had not even scheduled watering while we were gone, and the temperatures had soared. I had pretended nature would get along without me. What was I thinking? Of course, all would be ruined. (What god-like power I give myself!)
Weeding is a human concept—I think of this when I walk the gardens and see only what does not belong. What I think is not in the right place, what needs more room. Which plant is a stranger, and which plant is a friend— either planted by me or moved over from the nearby trees like the backyard woodland sunflowers. How limiting this all seems when I think about it. Even brutal. And essentially at odds with nature.
This line from Poem A Day a few weeks ago stays with me: “A weed in the mouth of the poem is a fruit.” From “On Repetition” From Song of My Softening by Omotara James (Alice James Books, 2024). This line deserves its own poem. Poetry is about weeds, really— what we find in unlikely corners, how one thing is really another, how everything connects, and ultimately grows unrestrained from what we think should happen. I urge you to read this poem about poetry, black lives, disability. Here is another line from it: “The urge toward poetry is a type of soil.” Oh, what song for a poet-gardener to read!
I suspect I have a problem with summer because it is a perpetual building up to something, a brewing. Preparation without knowing what will happen. Uncertainty. Berries ripen or mold in the field, the garden swells in a good year, dries up in another. You put the peas in early enough so that they hopefully have a head start against the sun. Remember to spray the tomatoes with something organic, so they don’t turn yellow and wither in July. Battle blight or fungus on the basil— rip it out and start over again. All so at some time in late summer, (which you call mid-summer because you worry that it’s over too soon), you cut into the fat fruit of a squat tomato, salt it like your dad does and sprinkle it with the spicy leaves of that Mediterranean plant that smell like the kitchen when your mom tore it up for her tomato sauce.
As tiny wild strawberries ripen on the edge of my garden, and my small rows of Swiss chard, beet greens, and lettuces seem to have doubled in size since I came home last Sunday, I know I am looking for reassurance from the natural world. If I get all the flower beds weeded, I will be ready for summer. If the tomatoes, peppers, squash and cucumbers are green and hardy now that I have trimmed the leaves that yellowed or crisped with some disease, there will be eventual harvest. If the peonies keep blooming a few more days and do not droop onto the sidewalk, all will be well. If the rain keeps coming, the gardens will live. And so will we.
In truth, chaos is a human construct. Underlying everything is my worry of what our country has done, who we are allowing ourselves to become. Who we decide does not belong— a stranger, “illegal,” the enemy. Who we round up and detain, jail, send to a foreign prison. How we police dissenters. This weekend, National Guard troops were sent to LA to “police” protesters against the wishes of the governor, mayor, police department. Tanks are rolling into D.C. on flatbed trucks to celebrate a would be king. I try not to think of this when I go to the woods, but when I hear the wood thrush trill her rounded melody, then the northern flicker echoes his sharp call that might mean “intruder,” I want to tell them, it’s OK. We will protect you. We’ll be here to make sure you have a home, somewhere it will remain cool, green, quiet. I don’t know if that is true, but I want it to be. I will work toward that end.
(Meanwhile, and this feels unconnected as weeds in the outfield, baseball is keeping me hopeful. I know it is a game. I know it is played by young men who make a lot of money. And luck and chance factor in more than anyone would like to admit. But darn, these Detroit Tigers, my team for nearly 40 years now, are playing good ball. Best record in Major League Baseball for weeks now. It is a delight to watch. My family of origin— now spread coast to coast as Phillies fans, Red Sox fans, Yankee fans, Mariner fans, and Angel fans— are good old summer baseball fans. Summer means the predictability of a game on in the living room and someone yelling at the pitcher or morosely staring at the opposite team celebrating a home run. So, hell with chaos if your team is good. And right now, mine is! Baseball is a game I need sometimes. Maybe that is why I became such a fan when I was a girl.)
Back to where I was going in this post…here is a small poem I wrote a long while back about summer chaos.
Absence Without her, summer fell on us, suffocating as an old quilt draping a mattress, stacks of hay bales smoldering in the neighbor’s barn. How green we were to accept it. Buried under dishpans of peas for shucking on the porch, or piles of pigweed. Like our aunts on the farm, we were married to the fields, hemmed in by their heat, the queer buzz and dip of the horse fly, grasshopper, swallow. No loop or soar that did not end on earth, a thudding. Her absence kept us on the ground, rooted, even though we were too young to want to leave. The Solid Living World Michigan Writers Cooperative Press, 2013
I think summer-meaning-chaos for me is actually about mental health, loss, how people cannot always figure out a way in their lives. Summer was work for me as a child, preparing for winter when it felt like winter had found us in the blooming time of year. Sometimes I think that is why so many of our population are susceptible, vulnerable to suggestion. When your own life suffers, it is easy to look outside, to think the rest of the world is having a great summer, swilling beer at the game, grilling burgers with friends on the deck, not a care in the world. May we all find our way past regret, fear, and retribution to the kind of summer we need this year. May we stick out the chaos of our nation together, seeking truth and stating it, over and over.
I will be reading poems with a luminous group of poets at 6 PM on Wednesday, June 11 at Schuler Books (formerly Nicolas) at Westgate, 2513 Jackson Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48103. I would go hear the four poets I am reading with if I was not a part of the gathering. They are stellar. One of us, Iraqi-American poet, Dunya Mikhail was recently featured in the NY Review of Books. Wowzer! Her new book, Tablets: Secrets of the Clay is amazing. Check it out even if you can’t come to our reading.
If you can participate in a No-Kings protest this Saturday, June 14, please do it! Juneteenth is coming up on Thursday, June 19, still our national holiday, still important for us to celebrate. Remember to celebrate Pride, too. Let’s focus on what is truly important in our country, as well as how to say no to who we are not. I will be back next week!
If you would like a signed copy of my new book, contact me through my website and tell me your address. I will mail it to you through the USPS! You can also buy my book at Booksweet and Schulers in Ann Arbor, or from Mayapple Press. Thank you for supporting poets, small presses, and independent bookstores.