Summer In The Villas Poem by B. V. Dahlen

On a dog legged lane
our cottage stood
behind a twisted wire fence,
and trellis bearing waxen roses.

The letter B
adorned the rosy shutters,
and announced with vanity
the owners of this summer manse.

Dad’s holly tree
thrived in the yard,
a cone of shining, spear edged leaves
affirmed the pride
of his domain.

His urban, captive, farmer’s heart
was gladdened by it’s beauty,
and the berries of it’s bearing.

Though Mom outlined petunia beds
with many well place shells,
her flowers wilted in the flagging day
despite the arching turns
of automated showers.

This multi bedded bungalow,
where sandy sheets
smelled damply of the bay,
was our retreat
from city summers spent
on scorching concrete
sidewalks.

We gathered round
the cream and blue based table
that hugged the common wall
of bed and kitchen,
and there,
my callused toes could trace
the nicks and chips
that silently witnessed
the other tastes and painting skills
that etched it's history.

We sat and played
with scuffed and curling cards,
at pinochle and spades
on rainy afternoons
that made the sea scented floor
damp to our footfalls,

and when the sun would shine,
a slamming screen
would heed our exit
to beach and tarmac
oozing in the heat.
Our frying feet,
would danced with hopping
strides to cross it’s measure.

The languid beach,
with mud and sandbars
rippled by the tides,
stretched out to nibble
at the distant drift.

A smell like iodine
wafting from the curling clusters
of seaweed, curing in the sun
would add it’s pungent scent
to others caused by lifeless crabs,
like prehistoric horseshoes,
upturned and shriveling on the sand.

We splashed through mud
which seeped between our toes,
and dried like cracked
and deadened river beds
upon our calves and thighs.

We met the tide,
and raced it back to shore
like heedless Bedouin
without a homeland,
and dropped upon a towel
where breathlessly we lay
while sun and breezes
gathered water jewels
that dappled bronzed arms
and other limbs
made sluggish by exhaustion.

Then finally, mounting bikes,
our patient steeds of summer,
we peddled home,
the sunset staring at our backs
to supper waiting.