Your poems bidding Good bye to Summer

[AuntShecky]

I would like to see some of the LitNetters post some of their original poems here on the subject of bidding goodbye
(and good riddance) to summer, although in this little ditty-- just to get it started-- the speaker expresses regret about a plethora of summer vacations that weren't meant to be. (Comments, criticism, brickbats welcome.)



Postcards

Where we are
is seldom where
we want to be.

Wish I were a wayfarer
winding my way across
Acadian forest and field.

Wish I could stretch out
like a blue Champlain
between two spines of mountains,
one craggy, one green.

Wish I could have seen
The Great Spirit create the Finger Lakes
by imprinting His Hand, like some star
in front of Grauman's Chinese.

Where we are
is seldom where
we want to be.

Wish I were serving up
Catskill borscht
and gathering bi-lingual yucks
in English and Yiddish.

Wish I were whooshing across inland seas
and snapping color slides
of turtles and wolverines
climbing upper peninsula pines.

Wish I were scaling Canadian Rockies
or burdening a demure
though well-comped burro
through the Grand Canyon some day
while whistling Ferde Grofé --
as the other turistas cheer "Ole!"

Wish I could wear
a dorky hat
unself-consciously.
Wish I could stay
in a motel room
far from the ice machine.
Wish I could drink
the water without fear.
Wish I were agile enough
to be on top
of the water-skiing pyramid
of Weeki Wachee FL
or even to play
beach volleyball,
albeit fully-clothed.

Ah, to see the Atlantic
from Kathadin's peak
or the Pacific from an aspect
near Puget Sound.
Dawn, dusk, we'll have
the sun cornered,
you and me.

And we'll send all
our home-bound pals
glossy postcards
with GREETINGS FROM . . .
Upper Sandusky!
Ashtabula!
Walla Walla
Washington D.C.!

Wish I were there.
Wish I were somewhere
Anywhere, with you.

Wish I were beautiful.
Wish we had time.
Wish you were here.

Aunt Shecky
All rights reserved.

[ampoule]

I love this poem auntie.
Dreaming of the postcards we wish we could write.
That very last 'wish you were here' really grabbed me.

[Pendragon]

Will This Be My Last Summer In My Mountains?

That golden explosion of sunlight,
Will give way to the dapple of fall.
All the trees shop for new fashions at Saks,
Except for the Firs, Pines, and Spruces
Who keep their private tailors busy yearlong.
Songbirds fly away on vacation to Bimini,
Others arrive for their winter stay.
My mountains will soon resound with chatter of squirrels;
Misty mornings with wraiths among the trees.
But they sold the top of the mountain behind to developers—
Sweet Lord, I could have done without that much change…

Pendragon
© 9/3/07

[firefangled]

Aunty, What a lovely poem about how we all feel from time to time, me in the last few weeks. Like Ampoule, I think the ending could be no other way.

[firefangled]

Will This Be My Last Summer In My Mountains?

That golden explosion of sunlight,
Will give way to the dapple of fall.
All the trees shop for new fashions at Saks,
Except for the Firs, Pines, and Spruces
Who keep their private tailors busy yearlong.
Songbirds fly away on vacation to Bimini,
Others arrive for their winter stay.
My mountains will soon resound with chatter of squirrels;
Misty mornings with wraiths among the trees.
But they sold the top of the mountain behind to developers—
Sweet Lord, I could have done without that much change…

Pendragon
© 9/3/07


Pen, thank you for this. I liked it very much.

My grandfather left a mountain in Franklin, NC to my mother and she used it for years as a place where she could go paint. About 20 years ago developers built a bowling alley on the mountain facing it and condos above that. She stopped going and one year I went up and the way to the house was thick with scrub pines 6 feet tall no more that 3 feet from one another. She sold it the next year and it is now condos.

That mountain had wild ginsing and the best blackberries I've ever tasted.

[Lambert]

All heat and madness,
Pale people proffering their time
For sunburn and cancer,
They might as well set themselves alight,
It’s definitely faster,
That’s for sure.

All this melancholy yearning,
It has the stench of ordure,
“Ah! The seasons are changing!”
They fawn.
Bollocks! Nothing changes,
Everything repeats
And everybody is too imbecilic to tell the difference.
All this mawkish autumnal twaddle-
Rue the end of the summer?
Bah!
I’d rather have an enema....

[firefangled]

The palms from Australia are not at home;
they are gorged with the rains of this Summer,
and their new branches bend with the weight
of opulence. Today, I meant to turn the frond,
last sprung from the heart, at the center of the tree,
but it was set in its curve, however asymmetrical
from its design, as if water had determined its life.
Are we not the same, pearl of rain, snowflake,
amber and gold factory of creation, pausing
for a moment in the now of time we call death?

[TheFifthElement]

The palms from Australia are not at home;
they are gorged with the rains of this Summer,
and their new branches bend with the weight
of opulence. Today, I meant to turn the frond,
last sprung from the heart, at the center of the tree,
but it was set in its curve, however asymmetrical
from its design, as if water had determined its life.
Are we not the same, pearl of rain, snowflake,
amber and gold factory of creation, pausing
for a moment in the now of time we call death?

Wow.


No more needs to be said

[AuntShecky]

Composed by yours truly in '91 while coming home from the Maine coast:

Berkshire Spur


On an all-too-rare trip going sixty-five
atop a naked gray strip within a chasm caused
by a metal T. rex, which some decades before
had invaded the rock and raped this land
for the necessity of progress, I rode and gaped

up at the green caps of these man-made cliffs
and in my myopia managed to glimpse a few trees.
Not blessed with the sight of a raptor,
only imagination brought aeries into view.

Vainly, vision strained to capture one leg
of an eagle's journey in his triangular transport
from Catskills to Adirondacks to here.
It was a purely spiritual hunt. I closed
my eyes to open the other one, the one in my mind,
the one that "sees" in the sense of understanding,
while praying for a particular Berkshire eagle,
the one who can serenely swoop between earth and sky.

Melville lived for a time in my town
but, as a man of thought, had sense enough to flee
back to these Massachusetts hills --
unlike this passive passenger, unhappily headed home,
despite the soul's thirst for expanse,
for the eternity of sea.

Way up, there really was an off-white bird
whose swirls would never spoil any sky.
He was, as I, a native of the river, not the sea.
The little gull, perhaps lost, closed in, limited
by these two sand-colored cliffs,
nonetheless continued his flight
gamely in search of salt-scented air.

All flesh is subject to boundaries,
circumscribed in some way, yet every soul
somehow begs release. At our backs
a hundred miles or so away,
the real ocean lapped against a true Nantucket isle.

East is that way, that way, behind us,
you're going in the wrong direction
is what I wanted to tell the gull,
exactly what he was telling me.

Aunt Shecky
All rights reserved.

[firefangled]

I really liked the entire poem, AuntShecky. But especially this:




All flesh is subject to boundaries,
circumscribed in some way, yet every soul
somehow begs release. At our backs
a hundred miles or so away,
the real ocean lapped against a true Nantucket isle.



There is something about a road trip that is very inspiring.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you for your comment,firefangled. But what does it
say when the speaker is a perpetual "passenger." Think of the broader meaning of the word "pedestrian."