ManicDDaily

Swimming In Summer

I’ve posted this villanelle before, but it seems pretty appropriate for Sunday evening, mid-August.

Swimming in Summer

Our palms grew pale as paws in northern climes
as water soaked right through our outer skin.
In summers past, how brightly water shines,

its surface sparked by countless solar mimes,
an aurora only fragmented by limb.
Our palms grew pale as paws in northern climes

as we played hide and seek with sunken dimes,
diving beneath the waves of echoed din;
in summers past, how brightly water shines.

My mother sat at poolside with the Times’
Sunday magazine; I swam by her shin,
my palms as pale as paws in northern climes,

sculpting her ivory leg, the only signs
of life the hair strands barely there, so prim
in summers past.  How brightly water shines

in that lost pool; and all that filled our minds
frozen now, the glimmer petrified within
palms, grown pale as paws in northern climes.
In summers past, how brightly water shines.

(All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson)

For more about villanelles, how to write them, and how they are like Magnolia Bakery’s banana pudding, check out this and this.

And for more poetry by Karin Gustafson, get ready for a book!  Coming out soon!  It is called Going on Somewhere – with poems by Karin Gustafson, illustrations by Diana Barco.   I will be writing more about this soon.   In the meantime, check out the poetry category of this blog for prior poetry posts.

Finally, if you are more interested in elephants than poetry, check out1 Mississippi, a counting book for children, their parents and their pachyderms.