Last night fireflies did not light up
night so the crickets picked up the charge
to move summer forward 
 
as if the first of the month isn’t just
mortgage due, electric bill to pay – the dial
did some kind of turn with hands 
 
made of sunsets and tides, the birth 
of a baby, and the first falls
of acorns and hickory nuts.  
                        

When life comes down to eating slightly white
raspberries, when aging purple ones dry up half
off the drupelets or bird-plucked remnants hang
jiggered and some canes wither into brown,
I hardly recall solstice and what fresh coming on
felt like. Birds made off with the last blueberries.
Sure, the zucchini, onions, and bowling ball 
squash signal time goes fat in spades. Kale  
holds up its reliable head. This sun is hot
enough to melt the frozen raspberries we picked
and stored weeks ago. I’m not ready to eat them.
                        

Plunging the tomato start into warmish soil is known 
as joy. Or prodding corn seed into hilled dirt
deep enough that you hope the crows won’t tug
them up. Imagining the wrinkles of beet seeds
blobbing up into rubies. Every gardener has these
moments with dirty knees, a shovel, a trowel, 
stretched patience of early summer. But this isn’t
what brings me hope. Move along a month or more
to when the straw mulch is sun-bleached and dirty,
past the solstice when you’ve started to ache with days
getting shorter and the long shadow of fall coming on. 
Now the beets want roasting. The corn has silk
tassels to braid or maybe you ate every ear.  
The squash swell into lampshades or baseball bats.
Knees remain dirty. The lift of the basket grows
heavy and you appreciate shade in a new-sweat way. 
Then an eager leaf falls too soon, and you balance
the weight of all you haven’t eaten or picked yet and
what you have is harvest. Right now.