Love Letter of Summer

By Cherbo Geeplay Summer is yet to come and may never come. She's stirring in an August noon, sitting on the long plateaus of these fields so far from our grasp. The rice fields are silent amidst these thick woods as the moon loans her radiance, her silver glow hovers over the lagoons. Beloved, see the treasures you left, bathed by the monsoon rains, whetting our appetites as we await the rising sun. Sullen, sad, the train was never meant to stop here. But the tears of the clouds, which began yesterday in earnest, still exalt the souls of our musing thoughts mingled with the divine wisdom given by the ancestors, needing no light to welcome the blooms that sprout on these coveted lovely crops. ll O Toni, you are gone too? For you are the Carnation of Ohio; the love letter of summer cuddling the rainfall. That bright tulip we all wished was had, capped to the longing breasts of our jackets, the cranberry that spread her indigo blues thrust upon us, swaying the nomadic revelers drinking from your fountain. Why abandon your guests, you violet pedagogic messenger? Your furnished truths are heaped upon our collars and shoulders now, gliding with the wind, crossing continents on the quick leaping hooves to a canter, a starved antelope in search of her groove, looking for the green patches which you groomed. lll O Toni, the faint waves of the enduring riverbanks are roaring, grey, to the erudite laughs of your volumes, the golden sun of Africa’s savannah weeps. The splendor of your aura is now washed on these desolate beaches by a massive storm blowing over these still hills, as we hold back the emotions that come to us against the the blowing winds. In her tarnished lust for fury, death blasting with thunder, stealing our sad hearts. So it is too, as the evening swallows the sunset, the roaming cavalier of cold gloom razes flares of fires, devouring the forest's leaves pitching her dark fork on the land once more, and tomorrow again! Beloved, you are the pearl of the calm seas, the lilies of the valleys. (February 18, 1931–August 5, 2019 Toni Morrison)