High Summer -- by Mimitig

The summer sun burns hot and high
Long into the night

Sultry afternoons lead to
Languid evenings

Dallying in conversation
As the sun slowly sinks
Over the sea in glorious pinks and purples

Leading to memories of other
Long hot summers

Parched grass, rivers flowing sluggishly
Swimming when the weeds
Fluoresced bright green
And punting was easy in the shallow waters

Further back
One Midsummer Eve

A dance, a Ball, a Commemoration Ball
A little girl, too excited to sleep
With a house full of visitors
Watched the pretty ladies
Dress in silk and satin frocks
Watched the Uncles
Preen in penguin suits

Further in the past
Another long hot summer

Young lovers arrive
In Split
On a blistering afternoon

So hot a post-war modern woman
Shrouds herself, head, shoulders, to the waist
In a shawl
The only one she has is black
She doesn’t know why
She looks the same as all the women
On the shore

Then from a yacht
A man is wheeled down to the quay
The men, in awe, take off their hats and
Bow their heads

It is their leader
Their hero has arrived

The post-war modern man, in shorts
Hastens to remove the brown leather cover
Of his new Kodak

Snap
Black and white, though faded now
My parents witnessed history
Tito arriving

In high summer

Still Life with Sheba -- by File

A Coke can floats,
not yet full enough to sink

fat Vuitton chests are heaved onto
little skiffs
to be taken to her ship.

I listen closely to the Coke can
kissing the quay stone
tink, tink-tink

*

Her entourage exit the Marriott,
alight so quietly,
like sunrise

in a red dress
I’m surprised how tall she is
and how slender

the eloquence
of each soft step she takes
is in the waves, on the waves

today she articulates
her own fate,
her nation’s

we listen closely.

*

After they leave
I sit down with a Guinness
on the terrace, thinking

I light a Camel, inhale
exhale thoughts of Solomon
of gold stocks.

If she gets back
she’ll come back a rock star,
minimum, maybe a metaphor

A dancer on the water,
the morning light in song,
a moment in this harbour,
the hope of living on

Nuff Respec to Claude Lorrain - Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba

Well, you seem to like these caption opportunities, so...

photo by Wandering Emu at www.flickr.com

Cake

Go on then. Write a poem about cake. It can be a small poem or a large one, and the ingredients can be rich or plain, as you please.

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Mildew and Blackspot -- by Zephirine

for Billy Mills


Glamorous rambler
putting its show on
in cerise clusters
waving and nodding
over the archway

When you look closer
see how each branch is
dusted with powder
musty and cobwebbed
infected and grey

Dorothy Perkins
“martyr to mildew”
still it keeps coming
back every summer
doing its number

**


So small at first the dark marks on the leaves
they passed unnoticed while the buds grew fat
and blooms emerged spreading their coloured silks
shining in the returned and welcome sun

Now as you bend to the familiar scent
confirming summer as you breathe it in
you see the spots have grown and turned to black
and the green shoots of spring are fading fast

Already a few yellowed leaves have curled
the blotch of blight on each draining its life
thin stems that once clung tight will lose their grip
and fall dying to the dry waiting soil

But still above them flames the flowering rose
seeming indifferent to the creeping rot
that from now on ensures its blazing pride
each year will dwindle and enfeebled fade.

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Scent of the Rose -- by Pinkerbell

Sorrow masks the scent of the rose
Pulsating in my clenched fist
Crushed like a strangled artery.
Velvet petals, laid layer on layer
Curl tightly to its sweet core
In intricate simplicity.
Its beauty threatening to fade,
Now plucked from its source of life,
Blood red congealing into black.
Its silky skin soothing and cool,
As cold to touch as the stone
Under which you lie. Withering.
And as I place it on you its
Shape springs back immaculate
And unspoilt, as if never touched.




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Underwater -- by File

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[running into the limitations of Blogger with this one, but if you click on the images the text will become much clearer]

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A caption may possibly occur to you....?

photo by commonorgarden from flickr.com

(definitely worth clicking on the pic for a full-screen view)
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For RJDL, March 2009 -- by Ringo37

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The city’s empty. Its knackered truths –
Rhubarb sheds, the Trinity, a sandstone civic quarter,
Windblown Justice on the courthouse roof –
Are worth less than ever. The Calder water
Runs clearer than it did – but symbolism’s
Dishonest, and transparency, in any case,
Is just a word for emptiness. Perhaps it isn’t
So empty, then: the sourness is just displaced –
The river runs clear but in the town
The currents aren’t so blameless nor so bright.
It would be nice to think that this was down
To negligence – to a foreman’s thoughtless oversight:
Some lever pulled in error, some sluice or weir
Breached or broken. It would be better, and not so hard to take,
If all of this was inadvertent; there would be less to fear,
And to forgive, if all this – all this shit was just someone’s mistake.
Yes, I could get along in a world unpremeditated and unmeant.
But in the world’s patterns I discern design; I apprehend intent.

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One Swallow -- by Mimitig

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illustration by David Cobb

They say
One swallow doesn’t make a summer

But they say lots of other things
Many a mickle macks a muckle
In for a penny in for a pound

Nonsense

I see a swallow coming home
And think summer

A swallow comes to nest
At home

And brings a second swallow

So if you see the one
You’ll soon see the other

And that is summer

Two swallows make their nest
Year on year, the same place
Only diverted by bigger, uglier birds like gulls

Gulls can destroy
They are predators
And if wee swallows nest
Where vicious gulls go
Gulls win

It’s nature

Happily my swallows nest
Safely

Safe space to lay tiny eggs
Hatchlings hopefully will know
A place of safety
Will grow to chicklings
Fly the nest
And come home in a year or so

To be my new swallows

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