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.