This summer day will burn hot, here and around the hemisphere. Last night the evening air chilled enough that we threw our windows open. They’re still open now, taking in the last of the fog-tinged air that flowed into our valley toward midnight.

This morning I picked up my copy of Robert Hass’s The Essential Haiku, to start July with a refreshed brain. Somehow these translations push a reset button in my mind before writing starts for the day. Here are five from master poet Buson that say summer in some way or another.

See if these verse speak to you, too. And scan down to five found haiku (taken from the email in my inbox this morning), to help put a few July 4 sales pitches in cool perspective.

Buson:

A moored boat;
where
did the spring go?

The willow leaves fallen,
the spring gone dry,
rocks here and there.

In the summer rain
the path
has disappeared.

Remembering how
he holed up to write all summer—
how fragrant my ink smells!

(And, in honor of the crows who waited until after sunset yesterday evening to make a ruckus:)

They end their flight
one by one—
crows at dusk.

My found haiku this a.m., all from emails dated July 1, 2023:

The sun is setting
on summer deals—
just for members.

Summer is here!
It’s best to not spend time
at the grocery store.

New gear awaits . . .
Fiery deals for the fourth—
top brands.

Clean up the grid.
Go electric.
Equity, equity, equity.

Your space plus flowers
equals paradise.
Shop now.

Happy fourth of July to you, dear ones. Stay safe and sane through the long weekend. It probably is best to not spend time at the grocery store if you can help it! And I do hope to see you at a reading or literary bird walk this fall, after the heat breaks.

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Like “Summer”? READ MORE: “The Night the County Supervisors Met to Sell the Mountain” (Deep Wild Journal); “Blush and Rouge in the Grand Canyon: An Interview with Melissa Sevigny (Terrain.org) and “The End Is Nigh: Grief and the Big-Dam Era” (Headwaters Magazine, Friends of the River).

LATEST BOOK: What I Never Told You: Stories (Wavegirl, 2022). Back in print following a limited-distribution edition, Steelies and Other Endangered Species: Stories on Water (Little Curlew Press, 2014).