June
Shall we jazz June
like the Pool Players of the Golden Shovel*
and sing, tongue in cheek,
that hot is cool;
or set it loose (but quite unfree)
like a bird from fancy’s forest,
its nest aloud with hatching pains?
Shall we dance through
the streets of the mind
to a drum chastened
By History’s rain,
our feet quick with
the memory of the mud?
The sun sometimes rises
in a different sky
with a different colour,
A different voice/touch,
and a nickname of darkness
translucent in its urgent bearing
Can’t you hear June laughing
at its diurnal swagger
even as a slender month
Squeezes its juice and
reforms its mirth?
The sun breaks into a sweat
Called summer in other climes;
while here it is busy
rifling cornfields and ripening new yams
Stoking new hungers
and jazzing up the joy
of our restless swings
June holds the year by its slender waist.
Its favourite song
is the language of the flower.
*Reference to Gwendolyn Brooks’ famous poem ‘We Real Cool’.
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