Mid-Summer Memories

Many, many – many – years ago I read this poem and liked it so well that I remember it to this day. The poet used words in such a way that you could feel the summer heat, smell and taste the juicy fruit and long for the times when you could be free to do whatever you pleased. Ah, summer when you were a kid. The poet says “The summer which never maybe was” but I remember them vividly: walking the block to the beach with the hot sand and cold ocean, sitting in a lawn chair listening to my favorite AM station singing along to all the songs, riding my bike anywhere and everywhere, trips to the library. Adult vacations can’t come anywhere near the pleasure of being alive and out of school in summers of childhood.

I hope this poem by John Tobias will bring you pleasant memories. Enjoy!

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity

During that summer

When unicorns were still possible;

When the purpose of knees

Was to be skinned,

When shiny horse chestnuts

(hollowed out

Fitted with straws

Crammed with tobacco

Stolen from butts in family ashtrays)

Were puffed in green lizard silence

While straddling thick branches

Far above and away

From the softening effects of civilization;

 

During that summer-

Which may never have been at all;

But which has become more real

Than the one that was-

Watermelons ruled.

 

Thick pink imperial slices

Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues

Dribbling from chins;

Leaving the best part,

The black bullet seeds,

To be spit out in rapid fire

Against the wall

Against the wind

Against each other;

 

And when the ammunition was spent,

There was always another bite:

It was a summer of limitless bites,

Of hungers quickly felt

And quickly forgotten

With the next careless gorging.

 

The bites are fewer now.

Each one is savored lingeringly,

Swallowed reluctantly.

 

But in a jar put up by Felicity,

The summer which never maybe was

Has been captured and preserved.

And when we unscrew the lid

And slice off a piece

And let it linger on our tongue:

Unicorns become possible again.