Indian Summer
Stephen Mead

Choose this:
chilled mornings, jade nights,
& the crisp warmth of autumn dancing.
 
Clear, clearest, feel it:
the eggplant soil, the stir-fry taste-
pepper-tang, tomato, cucumber.
 
Take the bevy, the salad spice:
play, toss forks aloft & catch...leaves!
 
Breeze-being, echoes of phloem, all pastoral
architecture holds beyond barriers
& treachery remembered...
 
May everyone's smashed ideals be re-grown seeds
through sidewalk cracks, the blistered earth thirsty
for fertility, & ready to demand the right,
gentle & tough as lover's whispers who climb
through ruins, rebuild, put back the stars
over journalists shot to death.
 
Yes, this Indian Summer, not promised, but given-
Choose, live up to, live it up:
the quiet astonishment, the astonishingly strong worth
the lines in your palm have been made by.



 

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​                                                                                                                JULY 2026