Poetry: Summer Nostalgia

Summer Nostalgia: A Pocket Collection 

By Lynn White
QuailBellMagazine.com

*Editor's Note:  "Beached"  was first published in  Paper Planes  Inflight Magazine,  "Michel" and "Perfectly Imperfect" were first published by Silver Birch Press.

Beached

He’s standing on the beach
with a small suitcase.
Not sure if he’s coming or going,
if it’s an arrival or departure.
It’s unclear.

It’s unclear
if the suitcase is full
or if it’s empty.
Once he packed it full
of his dreams, but now
it’s unclear
if any remain.

If any remain caught
in the lining, perhaps.
Or if all have been carried away
and are gone forever on a storm tide,
or washed up and buried in the sand.
It’s unclear.

All that is clear
is the emptiness
of a long horizon.
​
​

Michel

Traveling through northern France
with Michel driving.
The Beatles singing on the radio,
“Michelle, my belle”.
A sky of uniform grey,
dark, dark grey.
And then,
a surprise rainbow.
And then,
to one side,
a helicopter
outlined black.
Mosquito like.
Black.
And then,
I bottled it.
I can still remember.
​

Perfectly Imperfect
It started when we stood hopefully,
with our thumbs outstretched
by an English roadside.
We were heading towards Italy and Yugoslavia
without maps or money,
or sense of direction.

And we made it to Italy.
and swam off the rocks,
with a man we’d met in a cafe,
because he said we could.
And we swam and swam until two policemen came,
(one very stern and one very twinkly),
and said we couldn’t.
Nor could we leave the rocks without clothes on,
or with clothes clinging to our still wet bodies,
or lie on the rocks until we were dry,
in case we disconcerted the traffic or populace.
This being the main street in Trieste.

And we made it to Pec and lived
in a house ‘typique du Turque’
with a water pump in the garden
and a toilet, also ‘Typique du Turque’,
which made us very ill indeed.
But the parties were good and
the conversations interesting,
Even though no one spoke English.
And we learned to speak some Albanian,
which was always handy.
And we survived to sit thirstily by a hot,
dusty roadside and fantasize
about the ice cold mountain water
streaming through the streets of Pec,
and even about the water pump in the garden.
​
And we made it back home.
We had got lost a lot,
but hadn’t got raped or murdered.
So far as we can remember.
What perfection.

#Unreal #Poetry #LynnWhite #SummerNostalgia #Vacation #Beach #Memories 

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