I miss summer. My song of the summer, Such Great Heights, came on in my itunes shuffle, and it made me think of all those times this past summer I listened to it, and all those times I sang it. Riding my bike in the hot, hot, heat, in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Swinging on the swingset located four blocks from my house with my made-of-awesome friends. Standing alongside/in Lake Michigan with those same made-of-awesome friends. And of course all of the times I blasted it in my room and sang along, without a care in the world. The times I sang it, wishing I was singing it to someone, and the times I sang it just for the pleasure of singing. The times I sang it when I was happy, and the times when I was sad.

All in the summertime. And right now, on this frigid (actually not quite frigid...) January night, I'm missing the summertime, and my bicycle, and my friends, and the heat, and the fun times when I didn't have a care in the world (not true. I was freaking out about college. But nostalgia never remembers that). I miss you, summer.

Also, replace Rochester with Ann Arbor, or Kalamazoo, and this Sestina is very apt for right now.

Sestina d'Inverno by Anthony Hecht:

Here in this bleak city of Rochester,
Where there are twenty-seven words for "snow,"
Not all of them polite, the wayward mind
Basks in some Yucatan of its own making,
Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon island
Alive with lemon tints and burnished natives,

And O that we were there. But here the natives
Of this grey, sunless city of Rochester
Have sown whole mines of salt about their land
(Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snow
Comes down as if The Flood were in the making.
Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind

An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,
Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose natives
Blend coriander, cayenne, mint in making
Roasts that would gladden the Earl of Rochester
With sinfulness, and melt a polar snow.
It might be well to remember that an island

Was blessed heaven once, more than an island,
The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.
In that kind climate the mere thought of snow
Was but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,
Unable to conceive of Rochester,
Made love, and were acrobatic in the making.

Dream as we may, there is far more to making
Do than some wistful reverie of an island,
Especially now when hope lies with the Rochester
Gas and Electric Co., which doesn't mind
Such profitable weather, while the natives
Sink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow.

The one thing indisputable here is snow,
The single verity of heaven's making,
Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives,
And the torn hoarding-posters of some island.
Under our igloo skies the frozen mind
Holds to one truth: it is grey, and called Rochester.

No island fantasy survives Rochester,
Where to the natives destiny is snow
That is neither to our mind nor of our making