Watermelon Summer ... for Poetry Thursday

When I was in highschool, I lived on Long Island, close to the Sound, where my summers were taken up with swimming, waterskiing, clamming and all things water ... mostly saltwater ... and boys, of course. The years I spent there were some of the most memorable of my life ... everything was good. My parent's were very strict ... I wasn't allowed to date until I was a senior. But what they did for me was to throw the most wonderful clambakes on the fourth of July, where all of my friends were welcome.

A few years ago, at this time of year, while I was in the car driving down a street I drive down everyday, I caught a of whiff of something in the air. I don't know what it was, but I was immediately transported back in time to the summers of my teenage years. This poem was the result.

Watermelon Summer

Saltwater memories
shimmer on the surface
of my sixteenth year
possibility an endless wave
as I grip the tow rope
zigzag back and forth
through spumy swells
holiday friends power
the dream that
pulls me along

Above the sluice
where tides rush in
and out with the moon
we jostle and jump
from the board
summer romance
sizzling on beach blankets
tucked among the dunes

At dusk we dig for clams
place them in the pit
we shoveled in the sand
where tasseled corn plump
potatoes and lobsters bake
beneath layers of
steaming seaweed

Night anchors the dark
with starry skies
we toast marshmallows
in glowing coals
rinse sticky torsos
in the splash
of salty flirtation
stroll the shoreline
away from parental view
hands touching
shy kisses sweet
as fleshy melons
ripened in summer sun

jzr