Sweet Basil Sings of Summer

[cheaptrickfan]

I'm not much for poetry. I mean I like reading it, but write it only occasionally. I wrote this one last summer after a long day of picking basil and making pesto with my sisters-in-law. It was a very happy day, and it makes me happy to read this again and remember the day.


Sweet Basil Sings of Summer

Sunshine beckons with lazy fingers of light;
Cut grass scents the breeze
While hazy clouds of gnats dance
On my summer ramble with Mary.

A wind whispers “Too hot, too hot;”
Echinacea bob purple heads in agreement
As Japanese beetles cluster in congress
On calendula’s orange blooms.

Three humming hives sit, squat,
In the shade of a stand of spruce;
The bees sulk, angry and ornery
By September’s surprise heat and humidity

Fruit hang, jewel-like, from heavy boughs
Cortland, Northern Spy and Macintosh;
A lone plum tree, worm-eaten and ghastly,
Lifts wasted branches to the sky.

Rows of corn rustle and sway,
Shaking loose fat weevils;
Baby gourds still sleep on their vines,
Awaiting the season’s first frost.

Tomatoes slip to the ground,
Golden apples tasting of warm sun
Patiently, sweet basil waits for us,
To give fragrant leaves for pesto.

 

[PoWer2tHePeOpLE]

lovely.

 

[Naval_Fluff]

I love the use of imagery in this poem. "Golden apples tasting of warm sun" It mkes my mouth water everytime. Well done!

 

[cheaptrickfan]

Thanks, you guys! I love bucolic literature, especially poetry.

William Cullen Bryant's A Summer Ramble was on my mind when I wrote this. In high school I sang a song with my madrigal group based on his poem. The song was August Noon.


Title: A Summer Ramble
Author: William Cullen Bryant

The quiet August noon has come,
A slumberous silence fills the sky,
The fields are still, the woods are dumb,
In glassy sleep the waters lie.

And mark yon soft white clouds that rest
Above our vale, a moveless throng;
The cattle on the mountain's breast
Enjoy the grateful shadow long.

Oh, how unlike those merry hours
In early June when Earth laughs out,
When the fresh winds make love to flowers,
And woodlands sing and waters shout.

When in the grass sweet voices talk,
And strains of tiny music swell
From every moss-cup of the rock,
From every nameless blossom's bell.

But now a joy too deep for sound,
A peace no other season knows,
Hushes the heavens and wraps the ground,
The blessing of supreme repose.

Away! I will not be, to-day,
The only slave of toil and care.
Away from desk and dust! away!
I'll be as idle as the air.

Beneath the open sky abroad,
Among the plants and breathing things,
The sinless, peaceful works of God,
I'll share the calm the season brings.

Come, thou, in whose soft eyes I see
The gentle meanings of thy heart,
One day amid the woods with me,
From men and all their cares apart.

And where, upon the meadow's breast,
The shadow of the thicket lies,
The blue wild flowers thou gatherest
Shall glow yet deeper near thine eyes.

Come, and when mid the calm profound,
I turn, those gentle eyes to seek,
They, like the lovely landscape round,
Of innocence and peace shall speak.

Rest here, beneath the unmoving shade,
And on the silent valleys gaze,
Winding and widening, till they fade
In yon soft ring of summer haze.

The village trees their summits rear
Still as its spire, and yonder flock
At rest in those calm fields appear
As chiselled from the lifeless rock.

One tranquil mount the scene o'erlooks--
There the hushed winds their sabbath keep
While a near hum from bees and brooks
Comes faintly like the breath of sleep.

Well may the gazer deem that when,
Worn with the struggle and the strife,
And heart-sick at the wrongs of men,
The good forsakes the scene of life;

Like this deep quiet that, awhile,
Lingers the lovely landscape o'er,
Shall be the peace whose holy smile
Welcomes him to a happier shore.

 

[PoWer2tHePeOpLE]

geez, makes me want to take a nap in a field of golden grass. calming and soothing poem.

 

[cheaptrickfan]

It does, doesn't it? It reminds me of summers where I grew up. There were small mom-and-pop dairy farms not far where I grew up. I went to school with a kid whose dad used to be a Physicist, but gave it all up to see if he could subsist on a dairy farm. This poem always makes me think of this one hill of theirs where the dairy cattle would graze, and when it got really hot, they'd have out in the shade of this ginormous oak tree in the middle of the field.

*sigh* Very peaceful.

 

[PoWer2tHePeOpLE]

Lovely memory. When I was a kid I spent time on my mother's farm in a small town in Poland. I have fond memories of the apple orchards where I got my first taste of a real organic apple (nothing in supermarkets can compare to the sweet taste of a naturally grown apple), the profusion of feral cats nesting in the attic, the taste of fresh cow milk and the joys of scaling the walls of the barn and leaping into the soft hay. Happy memories. It is a shame my mothers memories of the farm are not that upbeat, she considers the place as a cesspit of slavery.

I thinks farms would be nice places to visit to pat the animals, indulge in the fresh food and take a nice nap in a shady glen, but I wouldnt want to work one.

 

[fancrawl]

By the September’s surprise a heat and humidity would angry and ornery.. so that is a mess..


__________________
Crawl space dehumidifier

 

[cheaptrickfan]

By the September’s surprise a heat and humidity would angry and ornery.. so that is a mess..

Yes, it would indeed be a mess, if those had been the words I used.

 

[cheaptrickfan]

I thinks farms would be nice places to visit to pat the animals, indulge in the fresh food and take a nice nap in a shady glen, but I wouldnt want to work one.

Good God no! Farm work is back-breaking and often thankless.

My grandparents had a huge garden and a few animals and it took up a lot of their (and our) time. They also helped out the neighbors with their animals, and "volunteered" me and my sister as well. There was this one incident before Thanksgiving one year involving a dozen chickens, a few geese, two turkeys and an ax.

*sigh*

I was in charge of scalding and plucking them all. Whee.