For me, there’s something particularly poignant about late summer. The world becomes a bit crispy, the grass reduced to brown bristles that crunch beneath your feet, and the spiny heads of spent coneflowers giving up their last breaths. Nights are cooler, the sun goes down earlier, and the lushness of summer lingers only in the memory. Every year at this time, I feel the regret that comes with the end of summer. I know it will return, and I appreciate the change of seasons. Still, I grieve when I put away my shorts and flip flops and break out the jeans and jackets.

But in spite of the brown that’s begun to consume what greeen is left, late summer has a heroic quality to it, a refusal to go gentle into that good night. As I age, I see evidence of this refusal all around me. And it’s remarkable.

Late Summer Chicory

The sunny trefoil has given way to dust,
and a slim stand of Queen Anne’s lace 
wilts near the tree line.

But wild chicory throws down a gauntlet to drought,
straddling cracks which snake along the scorched earth.
Their blue-violet mouths open to the day’s heat
and drink deeply.
They say, bring your worst:

    your chronic sun;
    your winds which flay the topsoil 
    from the fields;
    your searing days and smoldering nights.

They wipe their brows, stand sentinel
in a land which browns with certainty.

Is it any wonder that I love them?

That of all the blossoms in the world,
I choose these periwinkle flowers
which I would string and wear like fine pearls;	

that as I drive to town,
I let my hand float on the air,
blessing miles of blooms which line the road;

that a fragile, fickle world
quails before such blossoms
with backbone.

Today, when I look in the mirror 
where death lies fallow but eager,
my eyes are zealots who cry,
bring your worst.