So Long--Summer, so long.

Summer starts out like a poem with all the potential of a blank page and the indecision of where to start—what to cram in. So many favorites to highlight along with the subtleties that stitch it all together into one soothing sheet of life-sustaining respite. With excitement and anxious anticipation, we set out knowing it will end but ignoring that for now and hopefully tomorrow. Trying to focus on what is in front of us—something we’ve shoved aside too many times.

Ahhhhh . . . we sink, sip, slip, sleep, and summer. We summer. It’s the only excuse other than being sick that we can cling to and to which people can only respond with an understanding nod of the head and a quick flit of the memory to their last vacation and how they tried to block out the world beyond and just focus on the world in front—directly in front—of them. They understand.

We all need a break from “it all” sometimes. And so, in the absence of something funny or moving to prose on about, I have written a poem dedicated to a summer that seemed so long and yet now is waving so long to me with its gentle pre-autumnal breeze and sinking sun:

Summer, so long it seems

as feet set foot in June.

Sun seeps into skin with early light, late light—

days so long.

Vacation, so long awaited and anticipated

butts in chairs, toes in sand, heads in clouds.

The deep breath needed

for so long.

Memories treasured, tinted, told and traded—

taken out of storage to walk and

be rewritten.

Forever waits up, tapping its foot

for butts, toes and heads to return.

Meat and potatoes and apple pie.

Holiday cookies, new year, new snow, new spring shoots

and summer,

so long.

(This blog entry is dedicated to the letter “S” without which much of this could not have been written.😊)