Summer Frost

In rural Vermont's high summer, they gathered in Waitsfield for the "gala summer festival of the Poetry Society of Vermont, a read-aloud of poems written by members." The 43 poets and their guests paid $2.50 each for a cold roast-beef luncheon in a clover field on a 225-acre farm and then filed into the red barn for the readings. Most of the poets were middle-aged or more, and on the whole they celebrated a touching and suspended pastoral world savoring of a benign Frost. Some of the more modern verses, though, dealt with hippies and urban loneliness. Winner of the first prize ($15) was "Summer Sanctuary," by Ann Day, 41:

There was a distant rumble

hardly heard

as we raked hay

in the summer stillness.

Then a sudden darkening

veiled the afternoon sun.

Quickly it came,

pushing the purple-black clouds

over the mountains

and spiraling grey fog

out of the valleys.

We hurried to fork

the last of the load

onto the wagon.

A roar of wind

rattled the hay and bent the trees.

We reached the barn as the first drops

glazed our faces.

The huge loft surrounded us with the rap of rain on the roof and the sweet, heavy smell of hay.

We looked at each other with happy exhaustion, and smiled.

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