Robert Bly: After a Freind's Death

It must be summer. Push the dock out,
Bring the canoe down, find your old
Books—bird books, Hawthorne. Drive
To Gooseberry. Even in the Swedish islands,

Summer comes. They pull the linen off chairs,
Bring out the blue dishes, write some poems.
Say again: “It must be summer.”
Even though people die, it must be summer.

For Orrin