At the start of each month this year, poet Al Young shares his inspiration of the moment. Today, he drops by with his poem for July.
JULY WILL NEVER LIE
"Like a summer with a thousand Julys,
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes"
--- Haven Gillespie & J. Fred Coots ("You Go to My Head")
July will make you lazy,
July may get you high.
Blue-hot with time and endlessness,
July will make you cry.
As cricket-chirps can silence
whole Lodi nights in heat,
the breathy swish-and-hush of tides
cool Point Arena's beat.
July can grow so dizzying,
you'll long to get away,
be anyplace but where you are.
A month, a week, today?
The howls of owls at Mono Lake,
remembered in a dream,
leave July's softest soundprint mute,
untouchable, unseen.
July says: "Hi, I'm only just
one slice of year to yearn."
The price and cost of outdoor heat
add up, December learns.
July will make you crazy.
How does a year ooze by?
Big hot-sky blues tell Santa Cruz:
July will never lie.
(c) 2012 Al Young
Al Young served as California's Poet Laureate from 2005 to 2008. Throughout this year he'll be reading an original California poem for us near the start of each month.
