SUMMER by Lorraine Cregar

WELL DONE! Poetry

SUMMER by Lorraine Cregar

As a child, summer meant

Hide & seek, swings & slides,

Firecrackers & sparklers

Chasing lightning bugs, running from bees

Being stung at least once

As a child, summer meant

Riding bicycles (sans helmet) &

Traipsing through woods

Skinned knees & elbows covered with band-aids

Bare feet, bathing suits & sunburned skin

As a child, summer meant

Hotdogs, hamburgers, potato salad

Corn-on-the-cob & watermelon

Ice cream, root beer floats, &

Fla-Vor-Ice (the blue one was gross)

As a child, summer meant

Sandy Hook, Keansburg & the boardwalk

Sunday visits to grandma & grandpa

Skee ball & saltwater taffy

Black & whites from Dixie Lee

As a child, summer meant

Rainy days with Nancy, Frank & Joe, or

Ponyboy, Johnny & Dallas on the porch

Ping pong & shooting pool in the damp basement

Marathon Monopoly & always losing to my little brother

As a child, summer meant

Vacuuming the pool & skimming leaves

Hair tinged green; fingers & toes shriveled

Cannon balls & poor attempts at diving

Dad’s old, faded swim trunks he refused to throw away

As a child, summer meant

Grass, dirt, manure & humidity

Handicappers, trainers, jockeys & thoroughbreds

Racing forms, betting windows, picks & tickets

Ground rumbling, screaming for the gray one (always bet the gray one)

As a child, summer meant

Picking peaches behind dad’s print shop

Mixing, peeling & slicing, filling & folding, baking

Dad wiping his peach-covered hands on whoever was closest

Watching, mouth watering for that first bite

As a child, summer meant

Blowing out candles

Lorraine Cregar is a novelist, poet, and corporate communicator. Her poetry has been published in The Writers Circle Journal and The New Jersey Bards Poetry Review 2023. She is writing her first novel, Jackson Street Books, and her first poetry chapbook about life, cats and Corporate America. Lorraine lives with her husband, Mark, and their four cats in Chester, N.J., and is involved with cat rescue.