Friday, June 8, 2012

Summer

Thank you Jama for hosting this week's Poetry Friday!

A haiku to the start of summer

Spring's exuberance
Pauses for lazy summer's
Waltz of golden fields

You know what?  I started to think about this poem off and on all morning after I wrote it, and now I'm thinking I should have done it this way:

Spring's jitterbugging
Pauses for lazy summer's
Waltz of golden fields

My first thought was with the word 'exuberance', but after using 'waltz', it seemed to make more sense to use another dance term for spring...and of course, it would have to be 'jitterbug'!

What do you think???

SssspppprrrriiiinnnnggggggggnnnniiiirrrrppppsssSSsssuuuummmmeeeerrrr

Can you feel it? Do you sense the changeover from spring to summer?

Here it starts as the migrating license plates return here to the north after wintering in the south.

If you can count three cars "from away" for each Maine plate, it must be summer.

If there are frantic people backing up on the busy highway to catch a missed exit, it's summer folk who don't know you really can take the next exit and still get here from there.

If there are trailers with boats on them cutting you off, it's someone from away who only tows a trailer twice a year - once to bring the boat to Maine and once to get it home again. And they can never quite remember it's following them.

If the highway is littered with life jackets, lawn chairs and styrofoam ice chests that have floated into the air from the back of a pickup or the inside of a towed boat, summer is back. There are some really good deals out there on the edge of the highway.

If someone thinks you said the guy's name was Mac, but you really were saying Mark...one of us is not from here. It HAS to be summer!

If you are standing on the dock and someone asks where the ocean is...oh, dear...

Ah, yes! Summer in Maine has started. Time to kick back and relax!

8 comments:

  1. Hah! Great poem and love your list of "if's" :).

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  2. what a lovely haiku---i love the waltz part---genius!

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  3. Summer has started here, too -- mostly because school is out! Enjoy your summer!

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  4. Awesome haiku! I can smell the difference in the air here. Flowery spring to humid summer. I think summer would suit me better in Maine. :)

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  5. You're so right, jitterbug is the right word, Donna. And, I think if you worked on the rest of your words, you could cut and mix and write still another 'summer' poem, and maybe for the local newspaper. It's so funny to read. I always love your sense of humor.

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  6. Thanks for sharing both haiku versions and your thought process. Jitterbug and waltz...very nice way to capture the transition. I have never lived in a place where their is such a dramatic population shift in summer. I like your humorous take on things that could be irritating.

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  7. Here's one from our part of the country -- people cross the Colorado/Kansas border and want to know where the mountains are. Little do they realize, they have to drive about 3 more hours through flat dry high plains to get to the mountains!!

    I heard the first locust today. I think it's time to write a welcome poem to summer now!

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  8. My first time here, Donna - and love your revised haiku. Jitterbug and waltz are perfect ways to describe these wonderful seasons! I wonder what you'd use for autumn and winter? :)

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