Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Richard Wilbur, who lived from 1921 to 2017. He was an American poet.

I've read a number of poems by Richard Wilbur on this podcast over the last, I don't know,

nine months or ten months or whatever it's been. But when I ran across this poem today, I knew I wanted to read it to you.

Again, I don't want to overdo the Richard Wilbur, but I'm also not sure if it's possible to

overdo the Richard Wilbur. This poem is called My Father Paints the Summer. This is how it goes.

A smoky rain riddles the ocean plains, rings on the beach's stone, stomps and the swales,

batters the panes of the shore hotel, and the hoped-for summer chills and fails.

The summer people sigh, is this July?

They talk by the lobby fire, but no one hears for the thrum of the rain, in the dim and sounding halls, din at the ears, dark at the eyes well on the head, and the ping-pong-pals scatter their

hollow knocks like crazy clocks.

But up in his room, by artificial light, my father paints the summer, and his brush tricks into

sight the prosperous sleep, the girdling stir and clear, steep hush of a summer never seen,

a granted green.

Summer, luxuriant Sahara,

the orchard spray gales and the Eden trees.

The night again can cast away his burning mail.

Rome is at Anzio,

but the rain for the ping-pong's optative bop will never stop.

Caught summer is always an imagined time.

Time gave it, yes, but time out of any mind.

There must be prime in the heart to beget that season, to reach past rain and find riding the palest days its perfect blaze.

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