Indian Summers
David Baptiste Chirot

In "Indian Summers" are Indian Paintbrush Flowers’ Songs

The words of this poem haunt me . . . dreaming their images wide awake—seeing them in the sky—the waters reflected in the sky’s floating worlds—and the floating depths of the sky reflected in the waters of the poem . . .

Until I no longer know which is which, and am underwater in the sky and in the sky under water, floating . . . two-men deep— In this sky deep in waters high in sky under waters above trees—floating and looking up, which is to say, looking down into, which is to say—feeling sky-waters as a medium through which, in which, by which, which is to say—one sees---two-men deep—are they two-men deep on their backs—horizontally stacked—or vertically, one on top of the other . . . holding up the waters below the sky—or the sky below the waters—

"My lover lives with my love" —as though at a distance from me, in these waters, skies—"I is an other"—my lover living with my love—an other lives with this other of me---and "I" —I live alone”---

At a distance . . . in which under-water-skies-above turns into rain---my lover lives with my love under water not rain—and I, I live alone—in the under-water-skies-above turned into rain . . .

"I like the days that get rain"----then I live alone---I like this----while my lover lives with my love—I live alone in the rain . . .

In days that get rain, living alone—walking—through countrysides and parks that open among cities and plunge into hills—along river banks—among embankments—a curving dirt road into the distances, blurred eyes misted with rain drops—through which one sees—as through a glass, darkly—rain swept horizons, concrete and stone, forest smells, wind in boughs, scattering birds, fleeing debris . . . city and country dissolve inside rain . . . run off into streams among dirts, rubble, finding in mists and greys the gleaming of wet stones—through wet eyes, touched by wet hands . . . new forms of paint, mixtures of rubble and rain, fragments, flows—with which, living alone—to paint the face and peer into the puddles—mirrors muddy and mysterious—"I is an other", an other Eye reflecting through a glass darkly—the skies raining, the face streaming, the eyes pouring . . . "I like the days that get rain" . . .

This painting is from, strange coincidence—a synchronicity!—what here in Milwaukee and where I grew up in Vermont, is known as "Indian Summer"—(Indian Summer Festival is the first weekend in September)—the colors are of this season, in which the reds and yellows are colors from out of the greens and browns of summer—celebrations of vegetable life—“fruits of labor” of the harvest—harvest moons—the floating beings in skies of darkening blues of dusk—paint mixing with grasses, flower stems—by an ancient knotted tree on a hill overlooking Lake Michigan, thinking of YOU—in an other "Indian Summer"—with your Bengali poetry here finding a listening . . . and replying---to this—to YOU—with rhythmic Thanks—in a song made of colors, colors of Indian Summer--