Summer Romance

 

It blossoms full and sweet

in the summer heat,

yielding to nature’s course.

 

Brown-eyed Susans and daisies spar,

playfully inter-weaving their petals

in a teasing game of tag.

 

Buddleia’s purple cones flirt

with painted tissue-paper moths,

inviting Monarchs’ kisses.

 

Smiling-faced sunflowers beam over

wild volunteers who cry

“Yes!” to life.

 

Passionate, thickly scented roses

droop their tired heads,

holding fast to their riotous explosion.

 

They surrender spent seeds to the frosty soil

on the promise of another summer day.  

 

 

Through Kieran’s Eyes 

 

You crouch in the sunshine, intent

on scraggly grass and weeds. 

 

Chin on knees, you lean 

forward in wide-eyed wonder. 

 

Other children rough and tumble, shriek 

and toddle, swoop in for a look, turn away. 

 

You know more than you can say; 

You blurt a single word: ‘pider!  

 

And there it is: 

leg by dainty leg, holding 

us in thrall as it spins

a universe in silk.

 

 

Winter Morning in Maine

 

We huddle by the radio listening

for school-closings, dawdling

over Cheerios and toast, imagining

spelling tests and long division replaced

by white sculptures and red sleds

as the forecaster predicts

inches over ice.

 

Outside: stillness. Thickening air.

Merely illusory flakes.

We hold our breath as the announcer

drones towns and districts: Bangor, Fairfield,

Farmington, Millinocket, Mount Desert,

a geography of snow and sleet. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kathleen Quinlan was first published in Earthborne in September 2011 and this was her first publication.  Since then, her poems have appeared in 20 different magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. Kathleen was a finalist for the Venture Award (flipped eye press) and a runner-up for the 2013 Cinnamon Press Poetry Collection Award.  Kathleen's debut pamphlet is forthcoming from Cinnamon Press in March 2015.