For me, there’s something particularly poignant about late summer. The world becomes a bit crispy, the grass reduced to brown bristles that crunch beneath your feet, and the spiny heads of spent coneflowers giving up their last breaths. Nights are cooler, the sun goes down earlier, and the lushness of summer lingers only in the memory. Every year at this time, I feel the regret that comes with the end of summer. I know it will return, and I appreciate the change of seasons. Still, I grieve when I put away my shorts and flip flops and break out the jeans and jackets.

But in spite of the brown that’s begun to consume what greeen is left, late summer has a heroic quality to it, a refusal to go gentle into that good night. As I age, I see evidence of this refusal all around me. And it’s remarkable.

Late Summer Chicory

The sunny trefoil has given way to dust,
and a slim stand of Queen Anne’s lace 
wilts near the tree line.

But wild chicory throws down a gauntlet to drought,
straddling cracks which snake along the scorched earth.
Their blue-violet mouths open to the day’s heat
and drink deeply.
They say, bring your worst:

    your chronic sun;
    your winds which flay the topsoil 
    from the fields;
    your searing days and smoldering nights.

They wipe their brows, stand sentinel
in a land which browns with certainty.

Is it any wonder that I love them?

That of all the blossoms in the world,
I choose these periwinkle flowers
which I would string and wear like fine pearls;	

that as I drive to town,
I let my hand float on the air,
blessing miles of blooms which line the road;

that a fragile, fickle world
quails before such blossoms
with backbone.

Today, when I look in the mirror 
where death lies fallow but eager,
my eyes are zealots who cry,
bring your worst.

Pool side is my best side. –Unknown

Our backyard pool–by any stretch of the imagination–is humble. It’s a 15 ft. above ground pool from Walmart that we’ve had for three years. We bought it during the pandemic when pools were nearly impossible to find, so we felt we’d struck gold when we located one (there was literally only ONE) in Des Moines. We counted our lucky stars as we drove home with our new pool in the back of the truck. Since we bought the pool, we’ve added a pool deck, a cement base and stone surround, and dug it into the hillside so that when you’re floating in it, it’s almost like an infinity pool. Beyond the pool edge is a span of timber–green as far as the eye can see.

I’ve come to love the pool as much or more than my grandson, Griffin. We’re faithful pool users, logging more hours in the water than I can count. Sometimes, we swim twice or three times a day because we can. There is no trip to town involved, no tickets to buy, and no line at the concession stand. Here, the snacks are plentiful and free, just inside Grandma’s house. So, what’s not to love?

Each year, Griff and I wait in anticipation for the pool to go up. And each year, he gets in as the pool is being filled with water from the hose so cold it’s numbing. But he insists that it’s not so bad, that it’s worth blue lips. This past summer, he and I have spent almost every afternoon in the pool, and during those hours, I’ve come to know and love him even more (if that’s possible).

We shared afternoons of bull riding during which he flails around on a pool noodle-become-bull, as I count down the 8 seconds, and make the buzzer noise. I’m also in charge of providing the play action for each ride. We’ve shared afternoons of sea exploration during which he dons his scuba mask and scours the pool/ocean bottom for a variety of creatures that he retrieves and deposits on my floatie. Again, I’m responsible for identifying and counting the creatures he captures. We’ve spent afternoons during which my floatie is a race car, and he’s the mechanic who gasses and tunes me up, and then speeds me across the diameter of the pool. We’ve spent afternoons during which he performs an array of tricks, from handstands to sommersaults, on which I score him. I admit that I’m a generous scorer; he always earns at least a 9.

One afternoon, however, he flipped off the back of his floatie into the pool and emerged saying, Well, I’ve been to heaven and just saw my Great Grandma Lois. Really, I said, that’s pretty amazing. Yeah, he said, well, I going to make another trip. He flipped into the water and lay submerged on the bottom for awhile. When he surfaced, he announced, I’ve just seen your Dad. He’s working at a pharmacy. He’s working at a pharmacy? I wanted clarification to be sure that I actually heard this. Yes, but he’s still writing poetry, he said. While he works at the pharmacy? I asked. And after he gets off work, he added. There was something in his eyes as he recounted his visits to heaven, something soft which suggested that he understood how important and comforting it was that he report back on my dad. Although the entire conversation was imaginary–and comical, to be sure–it also testified to his belief in a heavenly home after death. At nine, he’d clearly thought about this and wanted to reassure me that my dad was doing well selling Pepto Bismol and Tylenol at some pharmacy beyond the pearly gates–and writing poetry, of course, in the break room.

When I recently told Griffin that he had 10 swimming days left until school started, he said, Wait, what? 10 days, are you sure? His dismay only matched mine. We have just a few last days in the pool together until another school year begins, and we take down the pool for the season. I’m painfully aware that I have precious time left when he’ll want to hang out with his grandma in a pool that’s only 3 ft. deep. And I’m aware that he won’t always want to tell me the kinds of things I’ve learned this summer, that as he enters his teenage years, I’ll often be met with stony silence and the obligatory yes/no answers.

But I will take every minute, every pool-filled afternoon, every confidence he offers. For in the sanctuary of our pool, we’ve lived a thousands lives and have seen the world in our 4,646 gallons of chlorinated water. We’ve ventured into the areas of philosophy and theology, as well as learned a thing or two about the best way to do a back sommersault. Best of all? We’ve lived it together. Our pool has, indeed, been a sanctuary. There are approximately 270 days until that wondrous day next May when the pool goes up, and the floaties come out. It goes without saying that Griffin and I will be faithfully counting them down.

Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world. ― Robert Frost

Disclaimer: In school, most of us had to memorize the difference between a metaphor and simile, and we’re painfully aware of the differences. For the purposes of this post, however, I’m using metaphor generously to include all comparisons–even those that use like or as (Please forgive me, Miss Gilpin!)

Consider metaphor’s elixir in matters of the heart. I recall a story my dad once told me about a high school basketball player he coached and taught. He noticed that this young man was habitually hanging out at the locker of a particularly pretty coed. When he asked him about his prospects with this young woman, the young man shook his head dejectedly and admitted that he’d repeatedly struck out in his requests for a date. My dad said, I’m going to suggest something–now hear me out. Open the literature anthology we use in class (the book, my dad admitted, he’d never seen the student open), choose a poem you like, copy it, and give it to her. The student didn’t say aloud, Are you crazy? but his face said it all. Still, the next day during English class, my dad saw the student crack open the book, thumb through the pages, rip out a piece of notebook paper, and urgently copy from the page. Then he folded the paper into the smallest square possible, and sent the note on its way through eager hands all the way to the front row where the young woman sat. Seconds ticked by as she unfolded the note and read its contents. Then she whipped around in her seat so violently that she almost threw herself out onto the floor. She looked back to the young man with utter adoration. A date was surely in the works, my dad thought. Later, he asked the student what he’d copied from the text. Something about her being like a summer’s day, he said. Something like that. He’d copied Shakespeare’s famous sonnet 18 which begins: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day/Thou art more lovely and more temperate. He chose a good one, my dad told me, a very good one. And he confessed that he signed the poem with his own name. Lucky for him, the young woman didn’t know her Shakespeare! Ah, the power of metaphor to bring two star-crossed lovers (or at least two ill-read high school students) together!

But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark. This metaphor comes to us compliments of John Updike in his novel, Rabbit, Run. And what a metaphor it is! Their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark. Wait–what? A leaping starfish? Realists may scoff and question the whole comparison, arguing that anyone knows starfish can’t leap. But poet Jane Hirshfield argues that [m]etaphors get under your skin by ghosting right past the logical mind. Leaping starfish may not sit right in our logical minds, but they live gloriously in our imaginations. And often in our memories. Thanks to John Updike whose metaphor I’ve come to love, I can’t look at a pair of locked hands without seeing them as starfish leaping through the dark.

One who truly understands the power and worth of metaphor, Portugese poet Fernando Pessoa writes:

There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality.

Take for instance, biblical metaphors, which bring the spiritual world of the divine into the physical world of the ordinary:

We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand. —Isaiah 64:8

I am the good shepherd, … and I lay down my life for the sheep. —John 10:14-15

I am the vine; you are the branches. —John 15:5

These metaphors live vividly, indeed, and take on their own personalities: God as potter, shepherd, and vine, and humans as clay, sheep, and branches. Or consider the infamous words of Elvis Presley: You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog / Cryin’ all the time. Or the timeless lyrics of Rascall Flatts: Life is a highway / I wanna ride it all night long. Singer-songwriters depend upon metaphors to live vividly and take on their own personalities, to console and enlighten us.

We use metaphor confidently in common speech. When we say that he’s a late bloomer or she’s a real thorn in my side, we do so with complete confidence that those listening will understand. When I tutored non-native English speakers, I became painfully aware of just how often we use such metaphors. The teacher is a bear? one Japanese student said with horror in his eyes. No, I reassured him, not literally a bear. Then I set out to deconstruct the metaphor for him, in hopes that he’d go to class the next day without fear of being mauled or eaten.

And what about bad metaphors, the kind that are so bad that they’re good? Here’s some of my favorites from actual student (not mine!) papers:

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling-Free.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph. (Wait–isn’t this one of those overly complicated math story problems?)

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

How I love a good, bad metaphor? They’re much like bad jokes. You wait for the punch line, and when it comes, it’s delightfully awful. As one of my former students so convincingly argued: You have to at least give me credit for effort. Clearly, there’s effort behind these bad metaphors, for it obviously took some thought to settle on a comparison of a warm laugh to a vomiting dog.

In Alvin Journeyman, Orson Scott Card writes: Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. I learned this lesson early and well from my father who claimed that [n]othing enriches our wooden lives like metaphor. And he could pack a whole lot of truth in very little space, presenting an exquisitely lean metaphor to carry some downright heavy wisdom:

Don’t think that a small vessel like a poem can’t be a freighter.

Gossip is a form of skinning.

Revelations are like stones dropped into the palm of a blind man.

A breeze is the tenderest habit skin can wear.

Speed reading is like trying to kiss a girl who’s driving by in a convertible. All you get is a hint of her pucker.

In bureaucracies sour cream rises to the top, followed by foam.

Marriage, like the sun, should be the longest form of love.

Those who feast upon memories occasionally eat the best left-overs.

Both Robert Frost and my father were right about metaphor. We must be educated in it if we are to live beyond our wooden lives.