Poetry Friday - Remember Summer Pleasures

    It's Poetry Friday, and Jama Rattigan is hosting HERE on her blog, Jama's Alphabet Soup and celebrating her 18th blogiversary! Congratulations, Jama, and thanks for hosting on this special day!

             

             Well, It's been a while since posting and I'm excited to be back, but most excited to read all your posts. I want to try to catch up a bit with everyone's lives and spectacular creativity, which I have so missed. 

           I didn't have the pleasure of a trip to the beach this year. I'm sad to miss the ocean, have been somewhere "on a beach" every summer for a lot of years. There was just too much going on for the family to get together for a week. When I saw this book at the library, it filled me up a little. Esther Freud has written the story of a family who lives at the beach in poetry, and it's about year-round pleasures, illustrated by Emma Chinnery, who shows the joys of every time of the year, even when there's snow on the sand!

        One lovely double-page spread!

                And our own kite-flying day. This time, it's my daughter who's flying!

Poetry Friday - Returning With A Dream

          Thanks to Mary Lee Hahn who is hosting this Poetry Friday, at her blog, here.  It's A(another) Year of Reading where she's sharing a poem response using a 'clunker' from Linda Mitchell, turning it into a poignant villanelle, one that will touch us all. Perhaps it's about Mary Lee retiring, turning to her changes, but also about these long months we've lived, also changing in many ways? Thanks for it, Mary Lee, and for hosting!

          I have been to the beach, a special family trip. And I gathered a few poems, too. Here's one!

Dreamy Browsing

 

on vacation

I dreamed 

about browsing life

 

remember 

I am a bookseller

always scanning shelves

 

this time, 

beach browsing

daily meant

 

sand between my toes

lapping water, salty breezes, 

a vendor’s empanada

 

everyday a grandchild’s laughter

gurgling in the waves

 

I wanted to buy one day

or two

pack them in the carry-on

 

I splurged

and bought them all 

              Linda Baie ©

Slice of Loving Nature

  Join us on Tuesdays with the Two Writing Teachers and others who post. 

 

         I just returned from two weeks on Captiva Island, in a house by the ocean with my family. Aside from glorying in the ocean, swimming and playing every day, saying goodnight to the sun, I do what I seem to do everywhere, watch the animal life. I couldn't take pictures of the live sand dollars I found, but we brought them out briefly in order to wonder at their small waving tentacles. I couldn't take a pic of the black snake with yellow under the head I saw wriggling through the sand, but I'll remember where I think it lives, in an awesome tree outside the house that must be home for a wealth of small creatures. My regret is that I don't have the time to observe for months. I think I would see changes that would surprise, just as I do in my own home. I'm hoping that the grandchildren will continue to notice, love and respect their own natural worlds as they grow up.

That special tree where the snake disappeared.

Here are the animals I managed to capture, among so many others we saw. 

Live shell found, observed, and returned to the sea.