Trumpet Vine

Another Summer Poem

Dear Friends,

I have been fascinated by these trumpet vines over the years and was happy they made their way into a recent poem, which I wanted to share. These lush plants seem to epitomize summer with their lively blossoms and rather promiscuous looking seed pods.

Though summer has never been one of my favorite seasons, this year I’ve been trying to live into it more and in doing so I am struck anew by its youthful, everlasting vibe, which I tried to capture something of in this poem. Though I had no idea where it was going, it was a pleasant little surprise to find the words from Acts 17:28 come to mind for the last lines.

The blossoms trumpet blood and red with orange

     across a vine which feeds on summer sun,

which rising richly blazes full and high

      across the teeming grass-filled fields of land.

That is until a stray and heavy cloud

      comes by to richly brew and offer drink,

to pour and flash such pools of rising flood

      across the walk, along the sinking wall.

These well-fed blooms, who reach about to climb,

      their heavy pods so full and in their prime

with endless seeds that flail, and float, and spread

      anywhere and everywhere they want and can.

So sings the boundless growth of summer-tide

      whose yield so unaware of care does ride

through quickened veins of pulsing youth, which

      lives, and moves, and finds its being filled.