Summertime in Poetry and Prose

"A whole summer ahead to cross off

the calendar, day by day."

RAY BRADBURY, Dandelion Wine

It was a fine summer evening when I went for my usual walk. The sun was still high; it had been a hot day. I rounded the bend in the road when I noticed a wonderful scent on the breeze. The trees in the neighbourhood were releasing their woody fragrance as the day cooled. It was a mix of something earthy, something green with hints of berries or herbs or something. I felt that zing of delight. In that brief moment the city disappeared and I was somewhere on a quiet woodsy path where concrete sidewalks and disturbing noises didn't exist. Then... a truck blew by and left diesel in its wake. The lovely scent was gone; I was back on my city street. It's just a tiny pocket of time, but it's these little bits of heaven that get etched forever in our minds, making summertime sing in our hearts.

Sometimes summer's special mood is triggered through our memories. Sometimes we get it through the books we read on our summer holidays. I love it when passages in a book echo the scents and sights and sounds of the summer season. Art and life joining forces, or maybe it's heaven and earth joining forces.

I'm hoping the few lines captured here today will evoke your own summertime bliss. 

"If you have time to open the back door in the morning

while you're drinking your coffee and look at the sky or

hear the chorus the birds offer, you have time for the marvelous.

You may only have a moment before the polite chaos of the day starts,

but that moment can stretch to the horizon."

DIANE ACKERMAN

"A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining,

the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing,

and the lawn mower is broken."

JAMES DENT

"Flowers lead to books, which lead to thinking and not thinking

and then more flowers and music, music. Then many more

flowers and many more books..."

MAIRA KALMAN

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass

under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the

murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the

blue sky, is by no means a waste of time."

JOHN LUBBOCK, "Recreation," The Use of Life, 1894

"One benefit of summer was that each day

we had more light to read by."

JEANNETTE WALLS, The Glass Castle

"Summer afternoon—summer afternoon;

to me those have always been the two most

beautiful words in the English language."

HENRY JAMES

"There shall be eternal summer

in the grateful heart."

CELIA THAXTER, An Island Garden

"The luxury of all summer's sweet sensation

is to be found when one lies at length in the warm, fragrant grass,

soaked with sunshine, aware of regions of blossoming clover

and of a high heaven filled with the hum of innumerous bees."

HARRIET E. PRESCOTT, The Atlantic Monthly, August 1865

"tree-ward eyes do gaze

fragrant breezes feather our face

music from yonder leaves begins

shhh, be hushed! and let day's

agitations be released"

BRENDA @ IT'S A BEAUTIFUL LIFE, 2018

❦

Wishing you a grace-saturated day, and

Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians.

Brenda

All images today come from Pixabay:

(daisies) by Jill Wellington

(woman) by Akyurt

(blue tit) by creisi

(wildflowers)by pasja1000

(walking) by Pexels

(flower vase) by Regenwolken0

(afternoon tea) by Simon Delacre

(hydrangea) by MrGajowy3

(clover) by analogicus

(girl) by LuidmilaKot