Category: culture

A Convertible Summer

Summer of ’67
British invasion
Canada claiming 100 –
Dad arrives home
in a powder puff
blue convertible.

Back seat sisters
long hair flapping
bellowing along
with 8-track tunes:
Loving Spoonful
“Do you believe in magic?”

I, barely nine
idolizing a sister
sixteen – a model
with go-go boots
and hippie style

Cottaged at Sauble
muscle cars prowling
oiled bodies lounging
and all eyes lit
on sister, and I
wondering at the draw
made castles in the sand.

Surfing the waves
avoiding the baby
whose brash cries
and quick, chubby legs
keep Mom distracted,
I am observer of the life
Neil Diamond is promising:
“Girl, you’ll be a woman soon.”

Ah, to be 9, in summertime
few the cares, and ideas
like popcorn, burst and pop,
forgotten in each watery plunge
still content to be a child.

(A Convertible Summer first appeared here in June of 2018.  I submit this edited version for Eugi’s Causerie Weekly challenge:  summer.  Image my own.)

 

 

Quarantined Thoughts

Oh, the plans I make –
swept up in sudden quietude –
art, writing, books to read –
creativity leaps with excitement

And yet, there is a somber tone
ringing in my head – an anxious
whirring – reframing solitude
as social aberration…

And in this dance of light and dark
how shall I weave the threads
braid together a semblance of order
find a balance I can live with?

(Inspired by the prompting of Reena’s Exploration Challenge: quarantined thoughts.  Image my own.)

On Common Sense

Can common sense be taught –
friendly snapshots coercing shifts?

Novices proclaim innocence,
blame their peers, but remember

When humanity is a foreign concept,
and sensibility a second tongue

The underdog suffers, and
who knows what is to follow?

(For Eugi’s Causerie weekly prompt: underdog.  Image my own.)

Spotlights Burn

She amassed children while
he pursued accolades

Family photos display
northern shorelines
tanned faces, white-toothed grins
parents not represented

Lost her childhood
at the bottom of a ravine
laid beaten and shattered
no one came to rescue her.

Guess that’s what drew her
the his light; money, she hoped
would not abandon her.

But muck tracks the same
and children need feeding
and absent a co-parent
she sleeps most days.

Offspring learn independence
a product of adults’ disarray
outlasting the fickleness of fame.

(For Reena’s Exploration Challenge:  prompt is the last line of the poem.  Image my own.)