Early Harvest, Best of Issue No.1

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

There's a Summer Place

There's a summer place
in my memory and a small girl
warming herself on a boulder
overlooking Lake Ontario
face reflecting the sun, dreaming.

Seagulls rode updrafts -
she watched them and they her
as she clambered barefoot
over huge granite outcroppings
lining the lake - each day

venturing a little further
than the day before. She
explored the vastness of the
landscape, her fantasies
separating the waters and the

melting sky. The smells of
fish scales shining, baking,
drying. Birds swooping each
cresting wave. A jungle of
drifting fronds under the blue

the green of the water. Her
probing hands explored each crack
of the granite walkway
where one incautious move could
drop her into a watery dream
deeper than she could wake from.

Yet it was as much her element
as it was the dragonflies'
filtering above her as she lay
immovable, creating her future.
Once, I drove back that way

knowing the summer place was
still there; knew if I looked
I'd see the birds, the grey rocks
that blue vault still scudding
forms resembling clouds.

And the lake, those wild and
quiet waters, they too.
Only the child is absent.

C. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Early Harvest, Gusto Press