To Summer

You can only have a lot of power,
never enough:
the strength to lift
rivers from their beds
one drop after another up,
millions spirited heavenward
lifted in the giddiness of sunstroked days
above the drought and dead cattle
the mud and fester made
not from their leaving
but their failure
to return.
And in your long absense too
you can paralyze the flow,
ice the brooks,
freeze stone
banks.
You can also return late,
stay too long,
appear surprised,
come to tempt
or disappoint.
This we know,
we who eat what will grow,
rise and sleep, and leave
just once.