That first light of summer in Philadelphia.
It is a cataclysm, or a lambent catechism,
or a cataract of sun. And it lingers,
like a young woman lingers in bed in the morning,
sheets rumpled and thrown off, dawn crawling in.

It is not a new refulgence. In fact,
it is elegiac, the incandescence of memory, and of
childhood and nostalgia. It is the life
you miss, which is, really, just your life.
And it coruscates in the neighbor’s sprinklers
that strut like benevolent metronomes.

The girl who won’t get out of bed
is playing ukulele on the wooden porch,
which has been stripped bare by too much radiance.
She and her friend sing softly, sonorously
their naked legs intertwined
beneath the rocking swing, their breastbones singed

peony pink. My father once told me that
you can extrapolate the whole from the smallest detail.
He was talking about God, of course.
But I am talking about luminescence.
How it is in the eroded grain of the wood, the constellation
of freckles on the girl’s frail chest,

the fractals of water lustrous on the blades of grass.
Or I am talking about happiness.
The dulcet susurrus of the girls’ voices, the dirty soles
of their feet, their fathers in the backyard with beer
and the grill, their mothers chopping vegetables
in the kitchen with beaded glasses of wine,

and the deep vicissitudes of summer light.