Friday from the Archives: “Summer Dawn,” a poem, by Priscilla Melchior, from NCLR 26 (2017)
Olympics is on tv, hurricane coming in, awaiting Applewhite results: must be nearing the end of summer. Priscilla Melchior wrote about this time in this Applewhite finalist poem in our 2017 issue. Listen to the poet read the poem aloud on our Youtube channel.
Summer Dawn
The sun, still searching for its magenta mask,
hasn’t climbed from beneath the Outer Banks,
but word of its coming has chased the dark to gray
and Currituck is still slick water.
Silence, save crickets and chattering birds, hangs like drifting fog
until the distant whine.
Soon there is another
and another.
Now a chorus of outboards sings across the glassy surface
skimming off to the distant Narrows.
We are still abed these mornings, but we hear them,
fishermen in their wooden boats out to claim another day.
Drowsily, we follow their song
until it fades to the far off
and lulls us back to the cool of a linen pillow
and the sleep of an August dawn
Priscilla Melchior grew up in Wilson, NC, graduated from North Carolina State University, and earned a master’s degree from Boston College. She is a retired journalist, former Senior Associate Editor of The Daily Reflector of Greenville, NC, and has two grown sons. She lives in Highland County, VA.
Read the entire issue on ProQuest or purchase a copy of the 2017 issue with the feature “NC Literature and the Other Arts”.
