5 Poems I Saw This Week

Feat. surf reports

July has dissolved faster than you can sing Jason Mraz’s hit 2002 single “The Remedy,” melting away like a soft-serve cone on a 90-degree day. What to do about it? Summer might be the best part about living—I feel more myself than ever—and the passing of July feels like the end of something great and the start of something sad. In reality, the pool stays open into September and I’m still learning to swim laps, so we can keep singing along to my King’s Island Season Pass playlist. We’re fine.

And in the mean time, finding poems so we can hold the day in our palms, just for a second, a lightning bug pausing before flight.

1. Outdoor ceiling fans

   I assure you, there is nothing like them. The security you feel when the heat is going nowhere, but you know the fan is trying. Matte-black mystery of a thick summer night, just beyond your covered porch or patio, the fan moaning its deep whir like a heartbeat.

   

2. Surf reports
   Could it be that my life-long fixation with surfing is less about Billabong bikinis and Kate Bosworth and more about the holy wavesong of the ocean? Each time I (try to) surf, I attempt to force my will onto the sea, but she is her own person and has her own moods.
   
   These moods are discussed in surf reports. They exist for beaches everywhere, a resource for surfers to understand how the tides and weather (and probably things I don’t understand yet) are affecting surf conditions. Here, a guy named Ati reveals that she is fun, but she is temperamental.
   
   I adore that we (surfers—yes, I’m claiming it) are all obsessed with her, how she’s feeling, what she’s up to. She is our little theatrical daughter.
   

3. The leisurely summer sundae walk

   Picture this: a family of four out for ice cream on a summer night. The ice cream is purchased, the mission is complete. Now, cones in hand, they stroll through the park where live music plays. People are grooving, but this family? They walk slowly, gliding across the pavement in private, silent bliss as they drag plastic spoons upside down across their tongues, depositing black raspberry chip and buckeye blitz into their mouths.
   

4. Strangers wearing hiking boots in a diner

   Transitioning between one Sunday activity to the next, they are full of breakfast and poised to hike. I can imagine them coordinating this outing, expressing their hunger as they entered the diner, discussing the weather and whether or not the rain will hold off. I hope they have a pleasant day under the trees.

   

   Photo: Julie Blake Edison via Unsplash

5. Ditch lilies
   Growing up, we called them day lilies. I thought they were special, a row of them two-feet deep at the head of the driveway. We rescued them from the bright green vines of morning glories, and at the end of the season I pulled their dead, dry stems from the earth. They popped out like a straw leaving a cup, a satisfying release.

I leave you with a sand poem, written by finger while the other hand held a peach.