Since we’re still short on #FabulousFridayGuestBloggers, you get . . . tada! . . . ME. I’ll just fill in with whatever seems like a good idea at the time, until we get back on schedule. And since it’s still National Poetry Month, here’s a poem of mine. It’s been in the early 90’s here, already, so my thoughts have turned to hot summer days. Hope this little boy’s enjoyment of one captures your imagination.

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.