Sarasota Summers

Children Playing on the Beach by Mary Cassatt

I walk along the ocean's edge today

I feel the warm, wet sand beneath my toes

Remembering the times I used to play

With grandmother in summers long ago

Collecting seashells buried in the sand

Like treasures waiting just for us to find

Along the beach we wandered, hand in hand

Our shoes as well as worries left behind

And though today  I walk the beach alone

I still keep my eyes cast upon the sand

To search for seashells even though I'm grown

Our treasures there to seek within the strand

I gaze upon my shells and feel so blessed

Those Sarasota summers were the best!

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, The Edge

In the Middle

The last item checked off Friday's list

I jump into my car

Head South

The desk clerk at the hotel

Knows us by name

Our little secret

We take off our clothes

Our identities

Our responsibilities

Giggle like the kids we actually are

Hide under the covers

Two turtles in a doublewide shell

Poke our heads out

Only to get a little water

Or burgers and fries

Come check-out time on Sunday

We reassemble our adult costumes

I drive North, you South

Count the days until next time

In the middle.

submitted for Magpie Tales, Mag 275

Half-Hearted

source

I tried to get you off my mind

You came to me in dreams instead

Awakened with you in my head

Convinced that I was not that kind

I told myself that I'd forget

Despite the years, I haven't yet

Afraid of feelings I might find

Avoided what I knew I knew

As I grew older, they grew too

Too far along to push rewind

A silly crush that wouldn't last

was relegated to the past

I wonder what I left behind

The passion I could never show

The part of me I'll never know.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Play It Again Toads #5, Kerry's Sunday Form Challenge, Constanza

Kiss

source

My very first kiss

I do not recall at all

This makes me wonder:

Is my memory bad or

was it the kiss that was bad?

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Out of Standard, Failed Kisses

In a Storm

source

The lightning's skeletal fingers 

pointed down at us

The thunder accused

"Sin! Sin!! SIN!!!"

We watched the storm

through the moon roof

Seats leaned all the way back

Pretending 

we were comfortable

Searching

in the darkness

Sometimes a car

isn't the safest place

in a storm.

submitted to Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Road Trip

Ouija

source

When I was a child

The line between doubt and belief

was permeable

a meandering current in a stream

between reality and imagination

How I loved to cross that portal,

to lift the veil of certainty

that disguises the world of possibility

We had a ritual:

Winter was best

as dark came early,

before we had to go home for dinner

Sit in a circle

with the board in the middle,

each of our hands resting ever so lightly

on the indicator

Wait

At first we thought it a trick

But we pinky swore it was not

The spirit was speaking

We were the conduit

Soon, the game became unnecessary;

We just held a pencil

and it spoke to us

in smoky, graphite

Over time

amorphous scribbles became

differentiated

Scenes of destruction, fire, slaughter

emerged from our own hands

without our intent

Our feast of fun

became fear, force-fed

I made the decision

to sacrifice the board

and, along with it, the drawings

Sealed in a trash bag to be carried away

with the week's junk mail

and coffee grinds

Belief and doubt battle to this day

Childhood fantasy or

something wicked narrowly avoided

Belief usually wins out.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Get Listed for October
and It's Ma Thing

Carnations

source

Carnations

pressed between book  pages

On the flowers, fragile and faded,

I can still smell the scent of long-ago perfume

The petals fall, papery snowflakes

melting like promises

forgotten.

Written for the previous week's Sunday Mini Challenge, Triquain at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

On the Brink Of

We were ten or eleven

Still just kids but

almost not

Young enough to play on the playground

Old enough to notice

(not quite hidden in the woods)

girls stealing smokes

and making out with boys

We were at that awkward stage

One minute playing with Barbies

the next, examining our silhouettes,

waiting for them to look like Barbie's

It was a time of imagined possibilities

and dreams smashed in linoleum school hallways

On the brink of we didn't know what

Our lips kissed only by Bonne Belle strawberry

we practiced by kissing ourselves in the mirror

I suggested (jokingly)

(Why was my heart beating so madly?)

that maybe we should practice on each other

"Gross!" you said, and I

didn't miss a beat, "Yeah, I know, right?"

and that was that.

The next year you had a boyfriend

and we lost touch

But I still remember those on the brink days

and your freckled nose.

 submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday

Letters

We found them
when we cleaned out your house
You had saved them
all these years
My letters
tied with a pink ribbon
kept in a shoebox
in your dresser
As I read through them
I saw my writing change
from big, round letters
to cursive
to hearts dotting the 'i's
to hurried adult scrawl
I met myself
as a child
a teen
and an adult again
Thank you
for giving me back a piece of
myself.

submitted (late again!) for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, FB Friday, Postmark: Poetry

Sticky Sweet Summer Memories

Starcraft pop-up towed behind faux wood paneled station wagon
Marshmallows burning to sticky sweet perfection
Odor of pine needles and earth
Rain pelting canvas, resonant and mellow
Eating bologna and cheese sandwiches while waiting for fish to bite
Summer smells of sweat, Coppertone, and bug spray

Not ours but quite similar! Source

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Camped Out In the Garden

Those Boots

Nancy Sinatra wore them!

I saw them on the Sony and Cher Show

Coveted them

like any 9 year-old girl covets

horses and 10 year-old boys

My mother said no

Too expensive

Besides, I'd soon outgrow them anyway

But on a birthday shopping trip

to the city with Nana

(We rode the bus; Nana never learned to drive)

I saw them in the Thom McCann window

Nana let me try them on

The salesman zipped and laced them up

I wore them home

feeling like a star

White go-go boots.

Mod Barbies had them too!

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, FB Friday, The Clothes Make the Woman

Hey Deanna

Hey Deanna
I thought about you today
Don't know why
It's been so long
but that song started to play
and I started crying
You know, it just doesn't seem fair
You'd just started flying
When they shot you out of the air
Hey Deanna
Have you found someone to love?
You never could down here
Maybe she's up above

I remember
when you dressed up
for Halloween
In wings and a halo
An angel groovin'
to Dancing Queen
You flirted with the girls
and the boys
The world was just
one of your toys
I can't understand
why you had to go away

Hey Deanna
I remember how you used to dance
You made everyone happy
But you never got the chance
Hey Deanna
Could you maybe send
a message my way?
'Cause I still miss you
and I just wanted to say
Hey Deanna.

In memory of Deanna Lynn "Odie" Garcia, 9/13/68 - 1/13/2001



submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday

My Early Works

My mom recently gave me an old scrapbook she had been keeping of my schoolwork. I just had to post a few of the most memorable things!

 Oh my. If you can embiggen this lovely painting from second grade, you'll see that I have small children hanging from the ceiling and other children sad and crying at their desks, writing "I will be quiet." I swear I have no memory of what traumatic incident prompted this! Scary.

I think this is from first or second grade. Some of my first poetry!

I guess it didn't work-that's why Jewish kids don't ask Santa for things!

When Summer Belonged To Us

Unidentified Photographer, [Two unidentified girls, one eating watermelon, the other disrobing], ca. 1960 (2012.24.1) from Fans in a Flashbulb

When summer belonged to us,

we shot out of school doors like pinballs

pinging off trees, porches, each other,

racing toward imagined jackpots

We lay in the heat,

hair and freckles bleached with lemon juice

and tasted the tang on our skin

We shucked Silver Queen on front steps,

the silk sticking to our fingers

and stealing nibbles off the cobs

We grabbed thick slices of watermelon,

ate them down to the rind,

sweet juice dripping down our wrists,

then spitting the seeds

across crabapple dappled lawns

We set the pace of our days

to suit our moods

and lingered under street lights

well past dusk

Feigning deafness to the calls of parents,

we schemed our next scheme

There was always another tomorrow

when summer belonged to us.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Elephants Dance In Fancy Pants-Get Listed

For Dave (written in 1984-EEK!)

This is another old poem that I'm posting for mindlovemisery's first Sunday prompt: Old Poetry. This one was written in 1984 (I was a sophomore in college!) and was inspired by the Who's "The Song Is Over."

We tried to write a song once
The melody came easy but
the tempo was too fast
and the lyrics were too deep
I couldn't listen
because I had another song in my head
that I was afraid to forget

The two melodies got mixed up
and I couldn't hear either one clearly
So I stopped writing our song
and tried to forget how it sounded

But every so often
when the music got too mellow
I'd think about the song we started
and wonder how it would've turned out
if I had taken the time to finish it

I tried so hard not to hear it
but I couldn't get the tune out of my head
The notes kept coming back to me

Then I realized they were coming
from you
You wouldn't let the song end
You sang it softly
but I heard the tune
I found myself singing along
and wanting to write again
But this time, the tempo flowed naturally
and the lyrics were soothing
and the melody is always easy.

Will You?

source

Will you pick strawberries after I’m gone?

Kneel in the dirt and the sand?

Will you take your children out to the fields,

forging a bond with the land?

Will you feed hummingbirds after I’m gone?

Sunflower seeds for the jays?

Will you know that it’s the cardinal’s song

beckoning you through the haze?

Will you plant daffodils after I’m gone?

Wait for the blooms Aprils bring?

Follow the butterflies in the May sun?

Remember me most in the spring.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Get Listed: Aprille's Choice, using dactyls

Waterlily Moon

A waterlily blooming in an inky indigo pond,

the moon perfumes the night sky with its petals

We kiss on the jagged rocks,

toss promises into the sea below,

and watch them sink like stones,

lost in the water.

A seagull calls for its mate

Its plea rises and falls like the peaks of the waves

We walk together,

leaving our footprints and our names

written in the powdery sand,

washed away by morning.

You give me the pit of your self

but hoard the sweet fruit

I plant it in the warm earth,

yield seasons of memories.

submitted for Wordle 102 at the Sunday Whirl