Back Yard

Posted by DJL on Jun 21, 2014 in Poetry | 0 comments

I suppose since it’s the summer solstice today I should find a poem about the sunshine or the long days or the heat of summer. But I was struck instead by Carl Sandurg’s poem “Back Yard” which describes, instead, the moon. The moon gets a shorter time on stage during the summer, and perhaps for that reason the poet must stay up extra late to catch it’s silvery rain and cherishes it all the more.

What are you doing this first evening of summer? I hope you have a chance for a moment of stillness, of wonder, of contemplating what people all over the world are doing in the light of the summer moon and, as you wonder, give thanks that God watches and loves us all.

Back Yard

Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month;
    to-night they are throwing you kisses.

An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a
    cherry tree in his back yard.

The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking
    white thoughts you rain down.

    Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.

“Back Yard,” by Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967), from Chicago Poems: Unabridged.