Deep Summer Shade

Lamps burn at noon
in the house beneath pines
where only splintered sun shines.
Dusk comes soon,
under barrier mountains lingers.

Morning late
climbing a rampart range.
Reluctant sun a stranger
at a tall tree gate.
Cedars spread shading hands frond-fingered.

Melancholy light always leaving.
In the cool under firs
water running slumbers stirs,
even cascades tardy grieving
flashing lazy lips.

At the edge of tearful water, sunken glade,
a head turns.
Dark eyes find you, burn.
Oracle deity dryad shade
wanting taking having you.

Always a poet, Richard Edwin Roberts (1919-2007) first published in the 1940’s (an anthology, Spring Comes in Many Ways and Duty to Death, LD. in Oscar Williams’ The War Poets). He continued to write during his two years at Black Mountain College later that decade. He was active publishing again in the 1970’s – 1980’s with works in The Christian Science Monitor, The Educational Forum, and High Country News. A native of Montana, his love of nature and all things wild is reflected in his poems, many of which were written during the last three decades of his life spent in a log home that he built off the grid in Montana. Posthumous works have appeared in Big Sky Journal and Cirque.