August / Helen Gray Cone

August

Loud pulses of the fields are heard to leap
Now all night long; all day the birds are mute.
The month hangs heavy, like a perfect fruit
That holds the opiate seeds of winter sleep.

~~
Helen Gray Cone (1859-1934)
from Through the Year with the Poets, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Helen Gray Cone biography

Peter Turner, Cornucopia, August 2016. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.