Summer Will Not Come Again
Summer Will Not Come AgainOld man, why do you sit in the sun and wear a heavy flannel shirt on such a warm August day in Gardenville? Get up and tend to your fields that lie fallow as they wait for the tractor and mower or manure spreader and seeder to give them new life. Don’t you know you’re not dead yet? That life still runs through your blue veins? Sing me a song as you did when I was a babe and there was no worry about hospitals and worse. When I knew you would never go to a strange place where I cannot follow.
All summer Dad sat in the blue metal chair by the front door and rocked. “Can’t reach my cane,” he would call to my daughter as she played in the yard. Honey would race to him, place the cane into his knotted hands and pat his knees, then run back t
