Tag Archives: summer

The Ughs of August

Posted on August 30, 2026 by jillbpearlman

I am not a friend of August.  It’s not for the usual fussy reasons – that I can’t stand sand between my toes, or dread oceans of red tide, or feel sad at once-bright green lawns now tough and rusty.  No, though … Continue reading →

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The Vagaries of Rain

Posted on August 24, 2026 by jillbpearlman

Rain, that thing that ruins summer weekends at the beach – but only weekends. That falls on unprotected heads, that makes soggy the books we leave in the grass and turns grains of sand to clumpy mud. It conspires to … Continue reading →

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Song of Apparent Innocence

Posted on August 9, 2026 by jillbpearlman

This late in the game, in our jade consciousness,there is still innocence.  It peels the leather back, it floods with exuberance the most open spaces watches the way an old port glimmersas do beaches, boardwalks, plazas  kids still thrill over the … Continue reading →

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Half Empty, Half Full

Posted on July 14, 2025 by jillbpearlman

Café life, the terrace seats and tiny spoonsand lovers’ faces in the sun. A trampy man demands to buy a bottle of water; the garçon says we don’t sell bottles; the bum grumbles into his half-shaven jaw: Je veux une bouteille d’eau.  They are … Continue reading →

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Inside the Summer Chant

Posted on September 1, 2024 by jillbpearlman

My best poem of last summer…a winsome stranger.When then friends asked about a line, I confided  its secret.  I was so tuned.  Now Greece is far away,another September song come. I lean in.   As I stand by the window slicing tomatoes and … Continue reading →

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The Volatile, Mutable Moods of Summer

Posted on August 22, 2021 by jillbpearlman

To be hot and uncomfortable; to be cool, a slight shiver from the shower, body meets air with friction.   To feel free, unfettered, released from questions that seem to dissolve themselves; to find those questions pulling down your head.  … Continue reading →

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What Augurs, August?

Posted on August 2, 2020 by jillbpearlman

I always feel trapped by August, its thick cluster of vowels.  Clotted.  Lugubrious, made for a lazy tongue.  Made for  limbs given up to the sun.  If it were a kitchen sauce, it would need to be thinned.  If there … Continue reading →

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covid-19, summer-20

Posted on July 19, 2020 by jillbpearlman

—after Inger Christensen Covid exists.  Covid-19 exists, summer-20 exists.  High noon exists.  Heat exists.  Water in rivers, in seas, in showers, from fire hydrants exists.  Coves exist.  Hidden lanes of purple hydrangea exist.  Overturned bones of kayaks.  Smoothness of stones, … Continue reading →

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Between Terror and a Soft Spot

Posted on June 20, 2016 by jillbpearlman

    The in-between is where we live – between good and evil, heaven and earth, perfection and despair, knowing and not-knowing.  Sometimes this in-between feels like giddy freedom – like the white space between lines of poetry, like imagination. … Continue reading →

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Summer Junk

Posted on August 19, 2015 by jillbpearlman

There are elements of summer travel that consume the intellect – history and literary settings and reevaluation of the real from the media images we’ve been fed.   There are things that consume the body – sun, mosquitoes.   And … Continue reading →

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