Émigré Summer by Rebekah Curry

Émigré Summer
(Poem Beginning with a Line from Adam Zagajewski)

The city’s towers rise like words of love.
A liquid sun drops honey. On the air,
something like lilac, blooming in a grove
that memory imagined. You were there
when maps had other colors. Here, the light
falls on you strangely; this is not the sky
you had a language for. Above, the flight
of birds you cannot name. The noble lie
of summer still surrounds you, but you keep
the knowledge of what follows: twilit snow,
the clouds where the forgotten gather sleep.
You travel in that quiet world below,
its constellations offering no chart,
with no companion but the secret heart.

by Rebekah Curry

Twitter: @rebekah_curry

Editor’s Note: This sonnet captures images as if they were treasures. The close is soft, but no less emphatic emotionally.