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This week: Summertime Writing Edited by: fyn  
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In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen.~~Steven Millhauser, Dangerous Laughter
August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.~~Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.
~~Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.~~Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
The beauty of that June day was almost staggering. After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction. The breezes were so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin as to be embarrassing.~~Dan Simmons, Drood
Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing.~~Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
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There is just something about Summer. An 'otherness,' Bare feet turned dusty brown like the back roads we explored. Clothes blithely tossed aside as, with wild abandon, we flung ourselves at the old, frayed rope hanging over the creek--as if, for a moment, we could fly, and swinging to the high arc before dropping into the swirling dark waters below. Long, sultry, lazy evenings sprawled in the high grasses of the far field watching as fireflies came out to dance with the stars. Weekly trips to play hide and seek in the town library, picking and choosing which treasures we'd bring home after a stop at the Dairy Barn for an ice cream cone that always, always melted faster than we could eat them. Memories gathered like so many wild flowers brought home to fill endless mason jars and blue glass bottles. Then, in a fifty-year-old summer and still, to this day --for we, my husband and I, still indulge our inner child. Endless walks, hunting down and gathering baskets and fists full of wild asparagus growing roadside on backroads never paved. Coming home to dinners of just buttered greens picked barely an hour prior. Wormed or bread-hooked lines tossed, red and white bobbers in the stream as we talk and mull over any number of dreams and plans. Panfish for dinner or caught and then released, it is the moments we harvest.
School vacations vanished in the ongoing world of working adults, but we do not let the summers escape unnoticed or unremarked. Summer is as much now a collection of possibilities as it once was that long, drawn out pause once school was finished for the year. Lawns mowed and gardens weeded, paint slapped on the back fence, cookouts planned or popping out of a neighborhood conversation might be condensed to weekends, but that feeling of 'summer' still catches and holds up close and we revel in it. The speed with which the rest of the year whizzes by is stopped cold, put on pause because it is important to share campfires or a drink on the porch with the pup snoozing at our feet. Roses blooming in the gardens will give way to the first sighting on the yearly crop of walking sticks on the bush by the garage and the daily schedule expands to accommodate the nightly tally. Scare half-inch long, brightly light green 'twiglets' give way to four-inch-plus brown as summer winds down, but we note the gowth, the continuation of the yearly cycle. Tomato flowers give way to fruit and taste buds water for that first sun-warmed bite.
Last day of school on Thursday; volume in the neighborhood will ramp up to shrill as 'outdoor' voices compete for supremacy. The sounds of the first lawn mowing of the week spread as the scent of newly-mown grass incites the rest to get theirs done as well. Not so different, really, than the smell of someone's charcoal grill inspiring cookouts in every back yard. Morning commutes shrink by fifteen minutes a day; there are that many less cars between points A and B! At home, our kids long gone to their own kid-filled homes, the wi-fi stretches out back where the outdoor office settles in beneath the widely-spread branches of the maple tree. Dappled shade with sweet summer's natural air conditioning, playlists change to birdsong and 'kids-on-the-street' and there's sweet tea flavored with mint from the garden.
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Poetry: June 13, 2018 Issue [#8957]
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