Hot Weather Poems are Hard to Find

Summer is not really here yet, but you wouldn't know it to stand outside in Cupertino today. At the De Anza College flea market this morning you couldn't escape the heat. The sun stung as it shone on our hands, on our bare legs. People stood under trees, umbrellas, in the shade of the anything they could find, even in the shade of each other. The line at the shaved ice truck was long. In spite of that brooding heat, people were in a good mood, and business didn't seem to be suffering too much. My friend and I came away satisfied.

My husband loves the heat and is happily gardening. Not me -- I'm hiding in the house, drinking ginger ale and waiting for the afternoon breeze. A good time to check in with poetry.

I went to my favorite poetry site (www.poets.org) to find poems about summer. There are many! Some are slow and achy, some energetic, some about love, or about the noise of a city night. None of them made me feel better - only hotter! 

Until I found this poem, "Miracles" by Walt Whitman. It don't think it's so much about summer as about abundance, and about the huge experience of living. Who cares if it's hot? I can hear my husband humming in the garden. Maybe I should go see what all the happiness is about!

Miracles

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, 
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, 
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, 
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, 
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, 
Or animals feeding in the fields, 
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, 
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, 
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; 
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, 
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—    
the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?