Friday, July 13, 2007

Poetry Friday: Bed in Summer

Remember when you were little and had to go to bed in the summer while the bigger kids were still outside playing? Remember lying in bed listening to their shouts and laughter? Remember wishing that you were old enough to stay outside and play...after the street lights came on? With these memories in mind, I give you a classic poem by Stevenson and an original poem I wrote many years ago.


Bed in Summer
by Robert Louis Stevenson


In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.


I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.


And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?



Here's my poem about Bed in Summer:

Bed in Summer
by Elaine Magliaro

Dark drifts in when I'm in bed.
Dreams whisper to my sleepy head.
Ice cubes clink into a glass.
Our sprinkler whirs and wets the grass.
Shouts of children still at play
Spark the night...then fade away.
Mosquitoes drone, crickets cheep.
Wrapped in summer sounds I'll sleep.


I wrote that poem from memory because my computer with all my poetry manuscripts crashed the other day...and I'm too lazy to look through my files of hard copies right now.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You wrote that from memory? Lucky for us, you have a good one.

Thanks! That is lovely.

I remember the bedtime-in-summer feeling . . .

(p.s. I finally got a copy of Today and Today!! Will review soon)

Elaine Magliaro said...

Jules,

My long term memory is fine--it's my short term memory that is beginning to fail me.

I hope you like TODAY & TODAY.

Andromeda Jazmon said...

I remember that summer bedtime feeling so well! Now I just want to be in my bed long before it gets dark... LOL Thanks for these poems.

Mary Lee said...

I'm torn between two worlds these days. I find myself less and less tolerant of summer heat and humidity, but still deeply in love with summer itself, and the idea of summer, and the memories of childhood summers...

Elaine Magliaro said...

Cloudscome and Mary Lee,

Yay for memories of childhood summers. Boo to hot humid weather! I don't function well in the heat.

I'm a night owl...I must admit--but at my age I sometimes nod off on the sofa when reading or watching TV.

tanita✿davis said...

I would lie in bed in the summer time, and listen to the planes droning over, and I always thought "The first plane of summer(vacation)!" and "The last plane of summer!" despite the fact that hundreds of others must have gone by.

Lovely.
And your memory is awesome!