Christian Poems About Summer

I don't know what I believe but I know the feeling when the light hits the kitchen table at an angle so specific it seems intended— as if someone, somewhere, had given thought to this: the way the grain of wood catches fire for a moment and the coffee sends its signal straight to heaven (or to the ceiling, at least, which on some mornings is close enough). I have no prayers that sound like prayers. I have: thank you for the toast. Thank you for the legs that got me to the window. Thank you for the window. If there is a god, I think god is the thing that happens in the pause between the kettle's click and the water being poured— that brief, warm, unnecessary silence where nothing is required and everything is given.

The window fan pulls evening through a screen warm with dust. Outside, sprinklers begin one lawn after another. A child calls from the pavement. Someone drops a spoon into a bowl of peaches. The day has not cooled, but it has loosened its collar. We sit without solving anything and let the moving air be enough.

No thunder follows. The horizon opens and closes its pale electric mouth. We stand on the fire escape with glasses sweating in our hands, watching a storm spend itself somewhere beyond us. All night the city waits for rain that never crosses the river, brightened by a promise that belongs to another place.