Looking for a July poem - who the hell writes poetry about July? "On hot, mosquito-ridden nights, I think of you." Not so promising. Then I found Billy Collins:
Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure -- if it is a pleasure --
of fishing on the Susquehanna.I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one --
a painting of a woman on the wall,a bowl of tangerines on the table --
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia,when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bendunder a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanasitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.