The birds of summer

Sweet Summer...
don't end!

You bring me beach plums

purple under a September sun,

but you take the osprey

and the huge folded serenity of the egret.

The beach is more deserted every day

and the skies bluer, the shapes of clouds more bewitching

but it's too quiet!

A beach without laughing gulls is a sin against nature.

Well not really, but go with me on this people!!

; )

Summer is for sandcastles and buried treasure and sunburned shoulders;

laughing gulls animate the quiet between the tides.

Goldenrod and monarch butterflies populate the dunes

and the moon is heavy and yellow when it rises out of the surf,

but terns and swallows and kingbirds are departing

massing further south, out of earshot.

I'll miss them this winter.

The peeps, in all their feathered mystery, have been leaving since mid-July.

They come, in May, with colored finery and leave, too soon, in a confusing camouflaged rush.

They all look the same... I can't tell them apart

and don't care to, really.

Maybe if I had more time to learn them.

One more day is all I need, for sure.
Summer... don't end!