My mind is on summer, especially with a morning as glorious as this one (at least where I live)! Combing my poem stash for summer poems, I found the one below that puts me back quite a few years to a time during my university days when I lived on a Vancouver street just a short walk from Kits Beach and a bus ride from downtown’s trendy Robson Street. (For a girl from the prairies, this was storybook summer living!)
Blenheim Days
In a brisk ten-minute walk
past rose hedges and patchouli cedars
I can be with lolling freighters on English Bay
strolling the waterfront of Kitsilano Park
mingling with tanned and muscled joggers
passing head-banded, guitar-strumming buskers
surrounded by the lingering coconut scent
of the day’s sunscreen
on evening’s heavy, warm, gold-tinted air.
I dream tomorrow’s outing…
I’ll buy a juicy nectarine or two
at the corner store where I catch the No. 4
to a Robson Street adventure.
© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)
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This post is linked to Poetry Friday. There are tons more Poetry Friday offerings at Heidi’s blog, my juicy little universe.
Violet Nesdoly 
Did you make the PF graphic here? Thanks for the trip to Vancouver in your poem. The lingering scent of sunscreen takes me back to summer beach trips with my family.
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Hi Margaret, About the graphic, no, I’ve seen it around on several Poetry Friday blogs and thought someone had officially sanctioned this new graphic…(I’ve been away for a few weeks and thought perhaps I’d missed something.) Maybe I shouldn’t be using it, but I thought it was a nice change.
Ah, the smell of sunscreen… It’s probably a summer memory for many. Love how smells drift one back into another time and place.
Violet Nesdoly vi.nesdoly@shaw.ca *********************************** Website: VioletNesdoly.com Twitter: @vnesdoly Facebook Author Page Violet on LinkedIn
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The last three lines sound like the beginning of a song, Violet. Thanks for sharing the poem, but also its back-story!
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Thank you, Laura! A song you say… interesting. I took a trip down memory lane with Joni Mitchell last night. As I’m re-reading those last lines, I’m hearing her lyrical voice. I wonder what she could have spun from those.
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Great sensory details and images in your poem. Thanks for this bit of Vancouver Beach! Happy Summer!
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Thanks, Jama! Happy summer to you too!
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Hi Violet! Loved your poem evoking Vancouver. I’ve never been to the NW but it reminded me of my glorious grad school days when I first moved to Cambridge, away from boring old Connecticut.
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Thanks, B.J. – And you’ve picked up the feelings of the time perfectly. That freedom of youth and a new future put a definite shine on such times.
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Gold-tinted air with buskers and lolling freighters sounds lovely, Violet.
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Thanks, Tabatha! You’ll have to come to Vancouver one of these years and experience our beaches firsthand!
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So atmospheric! Thank you! Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
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Thanks, Ruth!
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Sounds delightful. An adventure is just what I need.
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Thanks, Brenda! Hope your summer is full of adventures.
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Thanks, Violet. I hope your summer is restful and full of beautiful moments.
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You’ve managed to capture a beautiful time in your life, Violet. I too love those last lines of looking ahead again, so full of sublime feelings. And that first picture, the bubble, it shows the good times too.
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Thanks, Linda. It was a wonderful time. Sometimes I think, oh to be so young and blissful again…Mostly, though, I’m quite content to be in my here and now.
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I love the precise language you used in every line!
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Thanks, Mary Lee! Precision, the details, specifics … isn’t that what they teach you in “poetry school”? 🙂
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Your poem is a breath of summer breeze straight from the beach. Those details bring it to life–though it is a very different beach experience from the ones I grew up with on the NC coast.
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Thanks, Kay! I would love to read your poem about NC beaches… should you ever choose to write one 🙂
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Violet, this reminds me so much not of any visit to Vancouver but of those times when we are all alone with our sense impressions, when we have freedom to make plans and decisions, when every experienced is heightened by simple undivided attention. Love it!
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Thanks, Heidi! I love how you put that: “… when every experience is heightened by simple undivided attention.”
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Hmmm, I might need to head down to Kits after work today! I went to university in Vancouver twice, but alas both times I lived out in the suburbs, and dreamed of actually living in the big city. 🙂
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Thanks, Jane! I can’t guarantee that beach will be as I remember it. I hope so! Enjoy.
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You’v totally transported me to this lovely location Violet. I’ve never been to Vancouver but have wanted to visit, and this makes me want to go that much more! The s’s in this poem really move it right along in a lovely way.
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Thanks Michelle! I hope you get to visit someday… and that when you come, the sun is shining. 🙂
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