Keeping Summer

“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?