It Was Summer
Rondeau Poem by Thomas Harrison Humphreys
If you enjoy this feature and would like to see more, let me know with a comment, 💌 share, ♥️ like, or better yet, a 🔄 restack!
You can purchase Written Tales Magazine in print or digital, or become a paid subscriber and download your favorite editions. To view our upcoming stories & poems, please visit our publishing schedule calendar.
It was summer and time seemed ever ours
‘Neath leafy oaks, ‘midst the buzz of flowers.v
Since young June, we had tread barefoot about,
And had fished mountain streams spilling with trout
All in summer, our shrine ‘neath cool bowers.
At night’s faultless heavens we’d gaze for hours
As each starry prick rained cosmic showers,
While, more terrene, fireflies flickered about;
It was summer.
We ambled long through the blue cornflowers,
Heard the night sky’s roar, saw nature cower.
Through windows thrown wide, came the youngster’s shouts
And the season’s long days seemed ever stout,
It was summer.
But summer’s last rose had aged since its sprout
And prophesy of frost brought certain doubt,
Soon chimney smoke would pervade so dour,
The cricket’s last trill would chime the hour.
It was summer … no more.
orginally published in Westward QuarterlyThomas Harrison Humphreys, with a BS from the University of Lynchburg, is a history teacher in a small village who loves to talk to his students of literature. Thomas has been published in Westward Quarterly, Poetry Quarterly, Writers and Readers Magazine, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Written Tales and Mystic Publishers.