Summer Green

Brand new poem inspired by photo I took yesterday - enjoy!

Summer Green

Hot, humid

August day

Blue burnished

Cloudless sky

Cool, crisp fronds

Restful, fresh

Clean, clear spears

Summer green

© Alice Vedral Rivera - 8/8/2015 7:45am

Puppy Love - The Camp Series

Puppy Love is one of 2 new poems I wrote today to add to my camp series of poems and I have 3 more in the works. I had previously written 15 poems (6 in 2006 and 9 in 2010) that are part of The Camp Series. I have written these poems in the third person - the adult me looking back at me, the child.

The Camp Series was written about my experiences at Camp Hostýn in 1961 & 1962.  Camp Hostýn was about 50 miles outside of Montreal – the closest town was St. Calixte du Nord.  It was founded in 1954 by Father Bohuslav Janicek, a Czech Jesuit, for children of Czech and Slovak descent.  I almost didn’t get to go to camp in 1961 as I tried to swing on a clothesline and cracked my collarbone a few weeks before we (my younger brother and I) took Greyhound buses from Chicago to Montreal. 

The very first ‘publication’ of my poetry was in the official camp ‘pamphlet’ in 1962 (I was 11 and the poems were in Czech).  Both of the poems was republished in the 1979 25^th anniversary issue. 

Puppy Love

One of the

Older girls

photo art by AVR

Would take her

When she went

To meet with

Her boyfriend

And he would

Take Peter

And so these

Ten year olds

Chaperoned

The two teens

On their walks

On the path

Through the woods

Laughing and

Talking and

Holding hands

Peter let

Her wear his

Cap for that

Whole summer

And made her

Believe that

He liked her

Her first crush

First love at

Camp Hostyn

Summer of

Sixty-one

© Alice Vedral Rivera – 9/1/2013 6:15pm