City Summers

Sumera Saleem 

September 1, 2021

When you see the present summers hissing at the loneliness

Shambling in the pitiless metropolitan 

Across which lies the bare bodies of civil and uncivil zones

Half drunk on progress and regress,

I see long shadows on snaky roads 

Stretched always on work-dial 

Like the pendulum moving between duty and love 

In a desperately lazy struggle to fix a balance,

And a whiff of rude silence dares call a rain from my dried eyes. 

In a quiet corner of my mud house, I used to hear 

A sudden call of my mother to be inside 

As the sun lashes at our bodies

For trespassing mindless sanctions 

And may hit them hard 

For thirsty thoughts is everyone’s business.

Though my head hums in heat, 

I let my tongue shelter in the trees 

As if my heart harbors an oasis for the future.

When the evening cools like the shade of neem,

I feel how sleepy souls recuperate to wokenness.

I dream of summer evenings bubbling of

Soapy scented wishes, shining and drifting like time.

Sumera Saleem is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature, the University of Sargodha, Sargodha and Gold medalist in English literature from the University of the Punjab for the session 2013-15. Her poems have appeared in Tejascovido, Langdon Review published by Tarleton State University, USA, Blue Minaret, Lit Sphere, Surrey Library UK, The Text Journal, The Ghazal Page, Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters, Word Magazine. A few more are forthcoming in international and national anthologies.