As summer winds down, I decided to share a poem of mine about a ten-year-old boy enjoying another day camping in the mountains with his dad. This is from my book Summer Magic: Poems of Life and Love, and is one of my personal favorites. Hope you enjoy it.
The Rope Swing
Sailing up, up into
Blue summer sky,
Hot rope rough against his hands,
He shouts with joy, and lets go.
For a crystal moment,
He hangs suspended,
Frozen in time
Like a fly in amber.
All awkward angles–
Shoulder blades and
Elbows, and
Knobby knees,
Painted against the sky,
Heart filled with fierce joy.
Dropping, down, down
Into clear green water
Cold on his skin,
He sinks to the silty bottom,
And sits suspended
In an alien world,
Watching the silvered flashes
Of tiny fish darting to and fro,
Startled by his sudden appearance.
I am a fish, too, he thinks,
And holds his breath
As long as he can.
Finally, he rockets up,
Through a stream of
Tickling bubbles,
Breaking the
Surface of the water,
With a loud whoop of
Childish exuberance,
All thoughts of becoming a fish
Forgotten as he
Scrambles out,
Shakes the water from his hair,
And, grinning, hitches up his
Baggy shorts.
He’s ready
To do it all again.
Flying through the summer air,
Dropping into the cold water
To commune with fishes
Silvered in refracted light,
Then leaping to the surface,
A boy of ten once more,
Laughing through an endless summer
Made perfect by a cool green pond,
And an old rope swing.
by Marcia Meara
~~~
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2021
“Summer Magic” is a wonderful collection of poetry presented in two parts. The first part was based on a character, Mac, from a favorite series of mine, Wake-Robin Ridge. The poems are an amazing glimpse into his childhood and the mountains he grew up in. The second half of the book offered beautiful images that tugged at my heart or took me on a journey. Here are a few of my favorite passages:
“Stars, he thinks, pulled loose
From the fabric of the sky,
And flung toward earth
Trailing silver and gold,
And bringing a piece of Heaven
To those watching below,”
“Caught in that space between
Daylight and dusk,
When all things seem possible,
And the ordinary,
Remarkable,”
“Reminds me of those early days
When all the water rushed clear and cold,
And teemed with Promise so bright
You could almost catch it in your hands,”
“Bees moving slowly from
Flower to flower,
In dance weighed down by heat.”
This is a collection I highly recommend, and I’ll definitely be reading it again.
BLURB
Summer Magic: Poems of Life & Love is a collection of contemporary poetry about exactly that–life and love. The first part of the book features poems about the magic a young boy discovers while camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The second part of the book has a sampling of poetry about love, life and death, autumn, and dreams coming true.
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