“Smoko” is the New Zealand-Australian term for taking a coffee/tea break at work (mid-morning, mid-afternoon). I’m taking a Smoko Break from posting daily on this blog for a while. There’s still plenty to read if you click on the Index Link at the top of the page!
I shall be pottering around. In the meantime, I wish everyone Season’s Greetings for which ever season you happen to be passing through!
It was winter – late winter – and Athol went walking. The trees were bare; the ground had mounds of rotting leaves.
Athol kicked the piles of leaves as he walked. It may have still been winter but a mellow breeze blew the loose leaves in swirls. Athol sat on a log and thought. Just before the leaves began to fall his world was a different place. He was secure in his job; secure in his family; secure in his life.
Now all had gone – no job, no family, no life. The world had changed in harmony with the season. There was no hope. He should stop pretending that things would return to normal. Things wouldn’t. He should try to move on – but how and to where?
In front of him was a broken branch. It must have snapped in a winter storm. The snapped branch looked like the head of a crocodile! Ferocious! Fearful!
Athol moved on; he couldn’t sit and mope forever. He kicked another pile of leaves. It exposed a little frog nestling itself from the winter. It was asleep. It was waiting for the warmth of spring. It would die once exposed to fierce winter elements. Athol covered the frog over with protective dead leaves.
He went on his way.
The days were drawing out. Summer was approaching. Spring had not fully run its course, but the sun was definitely rising earlier and earlier. Soon it would be the summer solstice.
Young Grant was about to turn twelve. His birthday was on the last day of spring. “The start of a new beginning”, his mother would say. “Grant’s birth was the start of a lovely summer.”
Grant asked his parents if he could watch the sunrise at the solstice. “Of course you can,” said his mother. “What a silly question! There’s no school tomorrow.”
The next morning, the day after his birthday, Grant watched the sunrise. The day had dawned cloudless. It was a perfect start to summer.
Grant wasn’t the only one watching it. His parents were there, as was his older brother and younger sister. It was a family affair!
After the sun rose, Grant went to bed. He was dog tired having stayed up all night. The rest of the family were fine. They had gone to bed, had a good night’s sleep, and simply got up early.
(This poem is the last of this month’s posting of poems I wrote fifty plus years ago – I think I was in a bad mood about my schooling when I wrote this!)
Skin turns gold in summer.
We’re out of season in this hemisphere.
By autumn we’re the colour of plum blossom
Ready for dropping.
Trees here are born out of time.
Bastards never stood a chance.
Someone cuts them down
In case they fruit in winter.
Nursery care is too long, too slow.
We grow too high to be lights to the world.
I’d rather be scrub
And cover the whole earth.
That’s the trouble with southern trees
When they’re fed on shit from the north.
To hear the poem read aloud click HERE.
(The poetic form selected for this month is the English or Shakespearean Sonnet. This is the last Sonnet for this month.)
At minus two degrees it’s just like summer,
At least that summer fifty years gone by.
Let’s face it folks, that summer was a bummer;
It made the global warming stuff a lie.
Fifty years ago my girl was ice;
She told me straight, go jump into the lake.
Some other things she said weren’t quite as nice.
I took the plunge and stayed, for goodness sake!
Well, next she entered riding on a high horse
Just as autumn leaves were shedding gold;
She sneered and said go take a hike, of course.
So once again I stepped out in the cold.
A toast to icy days when we were young;
Yet winter’s snug because she’s summer’s sun!
To hear the poem read aloud click HERE.
| (These limericks are the last of my first-of-the-month poems. There have been 35 poems in all. The weekly music finishes this coming Wednesday the 6th. There will have been 101 music compositions. The daily stories reach the finish line on Thursday 7th with story 1001). |
WINTER
Take note that the weather each winter SPRING
Just look at the weather each Spring SUMMER
Observe that the weather each summer FALL
It seems that the weather each fall (Finally, since some definitions of the limerick say it must be bawdy and involve a member of the higher clergy…)
Did you hear of the bishop of York |
To hear the poem read aloud click HERE.
May was cool. Then June arrived. June was hot, hot, hot.
Summer was going on and on and on. Autumn was late. At last Autumn arrived.
The four guys could now leave with their dates for the movies.
Weave a Web 