Seasonal Nostalgic

Leapfrogging my grandparents’

Battenberg patio

On crucial missions known only to me

Observed by sluggish ants

Milling sun-drowsily

About the cracks

Whilst their winged cousins

-       Oh, the flying ant,

Summer’s notorious villain! -

Boldly emerged upon

The grey, baking slabs

 

Didn’t it seem the clock hands

                                    Were bleeding                          (time stigmata)

Choc ice and water fights

Outgrown school shoes scuffed

And faded, a forgotten concept

On the horizon: dread

But the future

Could be squinted away

 

Yet the soil thirsted for Autumn

 

And in the end

Everything is dirt

Reviews

[Imara]

Wow. This was so sweet it took me back to the hot summer days! "On crucial missions known only to me" oh boy do I know what your talking about.
The only part I don't understand is this " (time stigmata)" I'm not quite sure why its there, it really messed up the flow for me.
Ok back to the poem. The ending was so real and so powerful, that those summer days and nights are going to end but we want to and as kids we are going to ignore the fact that autumn, school is coming back around soon because right now we just want to play. Great Job :)

[Raef C. Boylan]

Hi, thanks for the read and review. i'm glad you could dig the kind of memories I was trying to get across. I'm not 100% sure about the time stigmata myself, but it's related to the clock hands bleeding and it must have made a lot of sense at the time of writing so I'm fond of it.

[Imara]

The were bleeding part makes a lot of sense to me. I took it to mean that the time was wasting away that in a painful sense you were summer was slowly dying. It's the parenthesis that confuse me, like you're trying to explain why you used the metaphor. Haha if your fond of it then keep it :) It's not doing any harm and it kind of gives it a personal mark.

[F. Nazarov]

Summer was my favorite season as a kid, but I think I outgrew that and Autumn seems to be my favorite now. Or maybe I should stop trying to pick favorites because there is something about every season that I think should be appreciated (get those biases out of here!) lol... Anyways, it's a great piece because it takes you back those days when you couldn't wait for summer, but looking back now it's a little sad because of the inevitable passage of time: summer becomes autumn, months become years, and then we're adults romanticizing our youth wishing for the ability to enjoy things without necessarily thinking about them. Summer and fun would come then, they went hand in hand... Today it's just another time of the year and an annoyance because it's too hot for us now in our work clothes and we're not flexible enough to leapfrog anymore. Nostalgia is an interesting fellow... on the surface it seems so light and playfully reminiscent, but the deeper you look into it the darker and mentally heavier it gets.
Also, I think that "yet" should stay. I entirely understand what you're going for and the sentence without "yet" would be an injustice to the piece.

[Raef C. Boylan]

Cheers for the feedback :)
Yeah, I'm not a fan of summer now, it causes my HS to flare up. Boring grown up haha. Spring and Autumn are good.

[Raef C. Boylan]

I prefer Autumn and Spring too...because I'm a boring grown up :)

[SpitfireGrrrl]

I like this - remembering summer, and everything we were in the summer as children. Well done :)

[VERONICA]

summers notorious villain, nice. This felt like summer.
I also really liked the part about the clock hands.
I think the third to last line would be stronger without the preposition

[Raef C. Boylan]

Hey, thanks for the review. I think you're right about that line, but I don't know how to fix it without making it grammatically incorrect ("thirsted Autumn" doesn't sound right to me)...
Appreciate the feedback.

[VERONICA]

'for' is not the preposition in question, 'yet' is.

[Raef C. Boylan]

Ah, my bad. Sorry :)
I like the "Yet" to be honest, because the line conflicts with the previous concept of school being a long time off ("the future could be squinted away"), since Autumn is already approaching.
Thanks for replying.

[Miranda Richard]

Good job!

[Emily B]

there's always the inevitable end . . .