“Summer Breeze” by E. Wells

May 7, 2023

Emma Wells is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with and by: The World’s Greatest Anthology, The League of Poets, The Lake, The Beckindale Poetry Journal, Dreich Magazine, Drunken Pen Writing, Porridge Magazine, Visual Verse, Littoral Magazine, The Pangolin Review, Derailleur Press, Giving Room Magazine, Chronogram and for the Ledbury Poetry Festival. She also has published a number of short stories and her first novel, Shelley’s Sisterhood, is due to be published shortly.

E. Wells has had work previously published by In Parentheses.

Summer Breeze

It lifts cotton-light layers
swishing girlish pigtails
in warming uplifts
as plumes from ovens
on May Day
revealing ginger loaves
rising high as maypoles…

Vibrant ribbons dance in glee,
summer-blessed,
hoisted skyward,
buoyed by summer smiles;
mead-soaked mouths
glisten like pirated treasure,
spilling free on sunbaked sands…

I relish summer’s warm kiss –
floral fragrance,
each worthy note
of this sublime season
(arguably the best);
Shakespeare spoke so
in love sonnets
giving bounteous praise
to peony blooms;
stolen caresses
in honeyed light
under balmy oaks,
sowing fertile seeds
in bulb-awakened wombs.

Rippling breezes
chase fleeing feathers
across full-bodied orchards,
playing skittishly
as sibling kittens;
turning, curving
amidst gilded uplifts
as tufts of shorn lambswool;
earthly waves coat,
foam, glaze, enliven
juice-ripe apples
hanging from boughs,
fit to snap,
under heavy orb harvests –
prospering like Providence;
resplendent as Hercules’ shield.

Summer’s dappled paint-strokes
course light, pastel paths
at first morning rise,
flourishing full at midday;
tangerine specks are pixies
dancing heated jigs,
animated by pivotal heat;
fairy-steps beat brazen hot…

…until the sun sinks,
falling to the west –

streaks of purplish scarlet
display lustful longings
across a nodding,
near-slumbering sky
as lovers search
for shady seclusion.

I lie awake,
cherishing summer breeze,
letting it coax my soul,
swallow it willingly
as popped paracetamols;
my dreams sport treacle-tiaras
sitting proudly
atop laced-bronze skin:
queens of dalliance;
princes of fertility
spin atop daffodil thrones.

Love is formed here,
held tightly as a prized chalice –
nurturing apple swell
of summer tides,
ebbs of evening shadow.

From the Editor:

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