Summer Magic - Leslie Pinckney Hill (1880-1960)

So many cares to vex the day,
    So many fears to haunt the night,
My heart was all but weaned away
    From every lure of old delight.
Then summer came, announced by June,
    With beauty, miracle and mirth.
She hung aloft the rounding moon,
    She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
    She set the crimson rose afire.
She stirred again my sullen blood,
    And waked in me a new desire.
Before my cottage door she spread
    The softest carpet nature weaves,
And deftly arched above my head
    A canopy of shady leaves.
Her nights were dreams of jeweled skies,
    Her days were bowers rife with song,
And many a scheme did she devise
    To heal the hurt and soothe the wrong.
For on the hill or in the dell,
    Or where the brook went leaping by
Or where the fields would surge and swell
    With golden wheat or bearded rye,
I felt her heart against my own,
    I breathed the sweetness of her breath,
Till all the cark of time had flown,
    And I was lord of life and death.

Leslie Pinckney Hill


Image : Pixabay - Fotorech

Bumble - Tony Gardner

Bumble on  the  Bramble blossom.
Busy, buzzing, bumbling  Bee
Blackbird  fluting from  the  branches
Leads  the pastoral  symphony.
Breezes  brush  their  baby  kisses
On  my  skin  to  pure  delight
And  the  summer  sun  is  warming
All  in  this  sweet  world  is  right.
Dancing  in  and  out  of  memories
Like  the  sunbeams  through  the  trees
From  the  long,  hard  years  I've  weathered
Scenes  return  to  sting  or  tease
Running  barefoot  on  the  shingle
Down  towards  that  crystal  sea
Still  I  taste  the  salty  water
Through  the  years  of  history.
Bumble  on  the  Bramble  blossom
Busy,  buzzing,  bumbling  bee
Taking  me  to  where,  I  wonder
Are  you  happier  than me ?

Tony Gardner


Image : Pixabay - Emphyrio

Bard at Bay - Richard Fleming

The granite sea-wall retains heat
so here I choose to pause and watch
the bead-bright fishing-boats at rest,
or bathers, by the slipway, splash,
dive in and scream and reenact
the antics of last year’s warm days.
I try to count the fish that shoal
in hundreds down below the wall:
young mullet, camouflaged and swift,
uncountable, a multitude.

This north coast bay where I’ve washed up,
as flotsam does, is changeable:
tide hastens in, then tide retreats
and coloured boats, like fairground rides,
prance, then lie still, then dance again.
The distant islands, Herm and Sark,
slip in and out of white sea-mist.
and were I painterly, each hour
at Bordeaux surely would surprise
with some fresh image to record.

Now here I sit, the June sun sweet
as kisses on my upturned face,
the granite’s heat a remedy
for old bones nothing else will soothe.
This pleasing warmth, so comforting,
is transitory, gone too soon.
Time speeds away yet still I cleave
to this old sea-wall, granite-rough,
but, hour by hour, its heat will fade
and night will follow soon enough.

Richard Fleming