THE LONG GRASS OF SUMMER
by Marlene Dean
“Time held me green and dying.”
--Dylan Thomas
There is a sadness in the
long grass of summer,
a whisper of days gone by.
Ring around the rosy
A pocket full of posies
Holding hands
we dance in a ring.
Someone shouts
Ashes, ashes
and we all drop down.
A friend holds a yellow flower
under my chin.
Do you like butter?
The smell of the sun is in my hair.
A daisy chain is my crown.
Ashes, ashes
we all drop down.
Petal by petal
we pull the flowers apart.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
Dandelion clocks are magic wands
wave them and watch the seeds
fly away in the breeze.
There is a sadness in the
long grass of summer.
We pull the reed from the shaft
and nibble the stem because
there is a sweetness
in the green and dying.
And we all drop down.
Marlene Dean holds a Master of Arts in English. Her book reviews, columns and poetry have been published in newspapers, anthologies and journals in the U.S. and Canada.