The wonderful dVerse Poets Pub has a “form for all” challenge tonight to write an ode. The prompt hosted by Gay Reiser Cannon cites Keats’ “Ode to Autumn.” I’m not in great circumstances to write a new poem today, but the Keats brought up the closest thing I have to an Ode. Or should I say,”eau’d.” (Sorry! And sorry too that some of you may have seen this villanelle before. It is from my poetry book Going on Somewhere. Check it out, and with it, my new comic novel NOSE DIVE.)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.
ManicDDaily 
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