Memories of Summer Rambles--By Marianne Szlyk--United States

Memories of Summer Rambles

A girl of the last century
strides
along the bike path,
past the goldenrod
the spiky chicory,
and Queen Anne’s lace.

With a brick red anthology in her book bag,
she wishes she lived among the Romantics
walking twenty miles or more
through the car-free countryside.

Waiting for a walk light
in August’s brittle brilliance,
she remembers a minor poem
that her grandmother still recites from memory,
having learned it
by a river
brick-red with dye
at the beginning of the last century.

Every so often Marianne Szlyk thinks about taking a walking tour in England, but for now she is happy to explore the Washington, DC area. She recently published her first chapbook, Listening to Electric Cambodia, Looking Up at Trees of Heaven, at Kind of a Hurricane Press: http://barometricpressures.blogspot.com/2014/10/listening-to-electric-cambodia-looking.html Individual poems have appeared in print and online, most recently in Poppy Road Review, Flutter Poetry Journal, The Greensilk Journal, bird's thumb, The Blue Hour Literary Anthology Volume 3, and Literature Today. She also edits The Song Is..., a journal of poetry inspired by music.