Tone Poem for Summer Solstice

after Robert Francis

Say oxeye daisy tansy yarrow orange hawkweed
purple clover Say skipper mourning cloak silver-

bordered fritillary monarch clouded sulfur Say
blue-eyed grass blue toadflax ragged robin rosa

rugosa shinleaf pyrola jewelweed white campion
Say bluebird swallow purple martin Say dragonfly

honey bee bald-faced hornet Say downy brome
curly dock barnyard grass hop clover Say warbler






— WALLY SWIST

Wally Swist’s new book, “Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love,” was chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa as a co-winner in the Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Competition, and will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in the spring of 2012. His previous book, “Luminous Dream,” was chosen as a finalist in the 2010 FutureCycle Poetry Book Award, and his scholarly monograph, The Friendship of Two New England Poets, Robert Frost and Robert Francis, was published by The Edwin Mellen Press in 2009. A recording of a poem from his reading in the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, accompanied by jazz cellist Eugene Friesen, a member of Paul Winter Consort, is archived at npr.org.