Scorpio

A Sonnet for the Season

The contrast between night and day reaches its height in the desert at this time of year. We are only a few days from the summer solstice now, a turn of season that is as full of meaning here as the winter solstice is in colder climes.

The night sky is dominated by the constellation Scorpio during this season of intense heat.

Scorpio

Now fear the tip of Scorpio’s bright tail
That conjures up the summer with its sting.
The final storm has passed, and each week brings
A warmer wind beneath the scorpion’s flail
To shake the chaff and dust of summer’s gale
While whirlwinds toss them skyward, eddying;
It scrubs sun-scalded soil white; it wrings
The last sweet moisture from the air, whose pale
Skies drowse in daytime, faint with heat.  And yet
The Scorpion’s nights are blissful, cool, and sweet
With breath of many leaves, where darkness lets
Coyotes’ shadows, lisp of rabbits’ feet,
Night-bursting blooms, escape the summer’s threat
In nightly haven far from the day’s heat.

---