August Wandering

This room is quiet.
I’m alone in the house –
except for a cat
asleep under the bed upstairs.
White noise pervades,
maybe it’s tinnitus, but it’s calming,
like crickets in summer-baked grass.
The carpet I vacuumed yesterday
has the coloured of wheat,
it’s soft underfoot –
until I wander onto the tiled floor
of the kitchen, hard and cool.
The fridge is humming the same old song.
A wood-pigeon’s coo echoes down
the chimney and out
of the open door of the log burner.
The log burner and I wait for colder weather
and a different kind of heat.
For now, the windows stay open
and the fire remains unlit.
From the kitchen window,
quinces are in view,
high in the tree, not yet
big and golden.
Are they also waiting
for the end of summer-baked grass?
 
Kim M. Russell, 19th August 2025

Image by Daniel Schuh on Unsplash

Tuesday is Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub, this week with Melissa who asks the question: Where do we go from here?

Melissa tells us that she came across a poem by Albert Garcia called ‘August Morning’, which inspired her – it’s inspired me too!

Our challenge is to start from wherever we are and write poems “wandering from room to room like a man in a museum”. Melissa asks us to notice our surroundings, take a walk around, and be curious about what is happening. We could write about ordinary things or things that we might not ordinarily notice. We should end our poems with open-ended questions, as Garcia does, incorporating characteristics of some of the things we’ve observed earlier in our poems.

32 thoughts on “August Wandering”

  2. I love the summer and its sad to see that it is cooling off. Love the engagement of the senses – white noise, soft carpet, the hum of the fridge and pigeon’s coos. The season is already transitioning with the last question – waiting for the end of the summer baked grass.

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  4. I appreciate the quietness and gentleness of your entire poem, Kim. I love the cat under the bed, and these lines:

    “White noise pervades,
    maybe it’s tinnitus, but it’s calming,
    like crickets in summer-baked grass.”

    I find it interesting that some of us do find all the noises in the background comforting.

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  6. There’s a Faulkner novel, “Light in August,” which I somewhat read years ago but remain haunted by the title, which seems to supply the ambience of this aimless wander towards inevitable fall. St. Bartholomew’s is nigh, which in Ireland was celebrated Aug. 24 with the cutting of the last harvest sheaf. How much hangs in this fainter light!

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  10. I love your observations, what a colorful, peaceful walk you describe ~~ think your quince are close to ready, transformed into jams, jellies, preserves.

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  11. Kim,

    You have so many delicious details in this.

    “White noise pervades,
    maybe it’s tinnitus, but it’s calming,
    like crickets in summer-baked grass.”

    “The log burner and I wait for colder weather
    and a different kind of heat.”

    Now, I want to go back and rewrite my poem entirely. I like this about the process of writing and reading other’s poems. So, inspiring.

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  12. I like the compactness of your nevertheless richly packed poem Kim, I think with more time I could have produced something more distilled and perhaps I should do a reduction, Tuesday nights I have work the next day so it is funny that it takes more time and thought to produce something distilled than to blurt out a long tour of our house. Yours had so many lovely images…

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  13. Such a quiet and gentle poem Kim. I do love the Wood Pigeon’s coo coming down the chimney, so charming. I loved the Wood Pigeon’s when I was in Scotland. Your home sounds lovely and I hope autumn is cooler for you.

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