“For him in vain the envious seasons roll
Who bears eternal summer in his soul.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Old Player
Is summer in your soul? I mean the best parts of summer–barefoot days, bees busy in the clover, blue skies studded with white puffs of clouds. I’d like to keep those days of warmth and freedom from cold within me all year.
When I was a child, I would lie under a shade tree on a quilt and notice the ever-changing cloud shapes. A youngster has such fun with this simple pastime. Sara and Nathan did that too. “Oh, look, Mem,” one would say. “There’s a giraffe. No, no it’s a turtle.” And, on it would go. Days of happy imaginings.
One of my cloud poems was included in Give Your Child a Head Start in Reading by Fitzhugh Dodson, Ph. D, on page 113.
Cloud Animals
Fluffy, friendly dragons float across the sky
Shapes of whales and dinosaurs that swim and soar and fly.
I like to watch the changing clouds, their shapes are fun to see,
And as they frolic on fields of blue, do they look down on me?
So, the heat of summer, of August, is upon us. Time to gather crops, make sure there’s enough hay to last all winter, get into the swing of school. And, it’s dry. We need rain. But then, summers are like that. Usually.
Summers are hot, but not always dry. One summer a couple of years back, Oklahoma had its wettest July on record. It was so unusual, it inspired a book, Grave Heritage. On this July in Levi, Oklahoma, Darcy and Flora had to contend with floods and a crazed murderer. It was hard; they had just moved into their new house on Granny Grace’s land, and they also had to help two elderly ladies who imagined somebody or something was in the house with them, stealing things like pies or cookies. Did the unusual weather have anything to do with this? And, would they have come through in one piece if they hadn’t had summer in their souls?
Speak Your Mind