This week at the Farmer’s Market in Whiteside Park it was an eventful and sunny three hours. Juliet and I wrote poems and Lucy sold her pottery. We met some more interesting new folks and talked with some old friends. It stayed in the seventies and cooled off as the evening came on.
Our garden grew like crazy just in the last week and in addition to more than our fair share of weeds, we’ve picked more beans and lettuce and berries. Broccoli found its way into several salads and we’ve got another nice sized head of purple cauliflower growing.
So, we were pretty much set, but we don’t grow corn and so I was counting on picking up some of that. It was on my mind as I sat waiting for our next customers and so before I went to grab some after the lines had died down, I worked on this poem.
Summer, from the moment we cleaned out our lockers as kids, has always seemed so short. Living in Minnesota has only made it shorter. It is gone in the blink of an eye. And so, it is to be savored, to be treasured. We need these warm memories for when darkness closes in around us at 4:30 p.m. I prefer jumping in my lakes and swimming without having to cut a hole in the ice.
So, this is what I crafted. It brings some of my own specific memories into play and my hope is that those would spark some of yours to do the same. Poetry isn’t for everyone. I get that, but it also isn’t that complicated. It speaks to sights and smells and feelings that we all have and much like functional and folk art being carved from a piece of dried white cedar that I wrote about last week, before I start writing a poem, the page is just blank. Anything is possible.
What might come from nothing, in this case, the sun beating down on me while I sit in the park, no one can predict.
So, enjoy, or question, or be inspired, or file it away like you might a song that comes on the radio that you’re familiar with but wouldn’t buy the album it came from. Art is subjective and it is personal. We all capture summer in our jars like fireflies after dark. At that point it is already, almost just a memory, but it is bright enough for us to grab onto and to preserve, albeit for a short time.
Bright as the new paint on our bikes when we were kids, bright as the fireworks and the blueberries hanging in clusters. Bright as my dreams that have yet to be extinguished.
Honey and Cream
The summer sun feels like a pickle jar in my hand,
feels like sweet corn and it smells
like warm butter running off my fingers.
On the back of my neck, it smells like
Hawaiian Tropic lotion from the (1980s)
in the old brown plastic bottle that kept slipping
from your hand. Just straight up Pina Colada.
The summer sun feels like sand
slipping thru my fingers
days that I will never get back.
It is maple seeds helicoptering down;
corn silk blown on the breeze.
Strains of The Cure songs echoing through my ears;
BB guns and golf swings missing their targets
like my fingers missing
your heart strings all those summers past,
missing the chord; striking out.
Like the dust accidentally rubbed from butterfly wings.
Un-flighted and desperate,
an out-of-place golf shirt with a collar at a Phish concert --
the last five notes of a song we both remember.
Copyright Timothy James Stouffer 08-11-2026
#elystreetpoet All Rights Reserved
