Summer Reading: Get Booked!

I hope you had a good Memorial Day, stacking up your books on the nightstand or desk, putting them in order for —

Oh, maybe that was just me. 

Anyway, summer reading has begun, so get with the program!

Summer reading means long days and humid nights reading any book you darned well choose. We count books read between the Friday before Memorial Day and the first Sunday in autumn. In 2018, that is Friday, May 25 through Sunday, September 23.

I have an idea of what is going on my list, and I will share my TBR with you soon.

If you still are thinking about how to spend your summer reading, visit your library (public or private), your local bookstores and thrift shops, yard sales and online book suppliers, friends and family, and choose what books look like they need to be read this summer.

Join the Summer Reading Program and put yourself in the running for a new book. Read as much as you wish  — and if you read the most books during the club reading dates, you will win a book of your own. Seriously. I will give you a book.

To get with the program, just contact me directly or leave a message below. 

Then, at the end of the summer reading period, send me an e-mail or include your reading list in a blog comment. If you read the most, congratulations! If not, you still are a winner because you spent your summer reading. And who knows, you may win a book anyway.

I've already had a few e-mails from eager readers, and I can't wait to read your list!

Even if you don't get with the program, I still would love to know: what's on your summer reading list? Tell me!

And a special shout-out to the artists of the 2018 Summer Reading graphic: Beth Wilson and her DoodleCats!

Squirrel • National Poetry Month

Thank you for spending National Poetry Month here with us at Hedgehog Lover. Keep reading poetry, keep sharing poetry, and keep loving poetry!

Squirrel

It's not a dignified end, dangling

from my fingers, held fast with

a candy wrapper salvaged from

my car floor. I found no napkin, so

I improvised, judging the safety

of the road while drudging about

for a makeshift shroud.

                                     She is small,

light, and I whisper a prayer. No,

more of an apology: had it been me,

I would have stopped, she would have

made it across. When one stops,

others follow, whether out of shame

or habit or kindness I never can tell.

I lay her gently at the curb, tuck

the wrapper under her, too small for a shroud.

A prayer, unbidden, escapes my lips:

for her, for me, for the careless driver

who brought us here, together, on the side

of the now-quiet road. It’s too late for

the peace I beg for in my fervent whisper.

It’s too late for us both.

By Chris Fow Cohen
Shared with the author's permission

The Ring • National Poetry Month

The Ring

Soon my father will lose his wedding ring
but before that happens we take the path
along the cliff-edge past the sign that says
Danger: Keep Back because the waves below
have undermined it, and the next big storm
will be enough to bring the whole face down.

I know this but I can’t help looking down
and noticing how each wave throws a ring
of pretty foam that’s nothing like a storm
round fallen rocks forming a sort of path
for someone who might find themselves below
which no one ever would, my father says.

It’s much too dangerous, my father says,
new rock-falls any time might tumble down
and injure them, and while the sea below
looks calm, a quickly-rising tide would ring
and terrify them, devastate the path,
then drown them just as surely as a storm.

I hear him out about the calm and storm
and fall in line with everything he says,
continuing along the cliff-top path
until it leads us in a zig-zag down
onto the sea-shore where a wormy ring
of sand recalls the tunneling below.

My father says the North Sea is below
freezing almost, thanks to a recent storm,
and so he eases off his wedding ring
because the cold is bound to shrink, he says,
his fingers, and his ring would then slip down
and vanish like the dangerous cliff path.

He turns around to see once more the path,
the dizzy fall, the rocks, the waves below.
He thinks his only choice is to set down
on one stone of the many that the storm
has carried from their North Sea bed, which says
a lot about the power of storms, his ring.

It slides down out of sight as though the storm
has also switched his path to run below.
This neither of us says. He never finds his ring.

by Andrew Motion
Courtesy poets.org

Photograph of Earth From Space • National Poetry Month

Photograph of Earth

From Space

On the outskirts of Luanda, Angola,

Gerald Nduma has walked an hour to school

carrying his chair, which is really

an empty coffee can. Nine years old,

 he holds in his other hand a mango which

will be his lunch.At school,

which is really a tree, Gerald

places his lunch beneath his chair.

This day, a missionary has come

With magazines. Gerald takes what

is given him. Soon he does not hear

the teacher’s instructions. He does not hear

the students’ chatter. He is looking

at the photograph of Earth

floating in a dark sea

which Gerald imagines

is plenteous with fish.

By Pamela Porter

Courtesy Poets.ca

The League of Canadian Poets

Trees • National Poetry Month

Happy Arbor Day!

Trees

I think that I shall never see 

A poem lovely as a tree. 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest 

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; 

A tree that looks at God all day, 

And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 

A tree that may in Summer wear 

A nest of robins in her hair; 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; 

Who intimately lives with rain. 

Poems are made by fools like me, 

But only God can make a tree.

by Joyce Kilmer

courtesy Poetry Foundation

Migration • National Poetry Month

It's Poem in Your Pocket Day! Print multiple copies of this poem and keep one copy in your pocket, then scatter the rest.

Leave them on your desk, or on the train. Put them in the lunch room. Hand them to strangers or friends. Share them liberally.

Migration

The police squint 

into the glare on the water looking 

for small boats. On a clear day 

the lightkeeper sees all the way 

to Algeria. Over his sofa 

hangs a tapestry woven 

by his grandmother from red 

human hair. Only the birds 

travel without papers. 

Though often now 

their tiny legs 

when they perch 

on the lighthouse railings 

are colour banded.

by Eleonore Schönmaier

courtesy poets.ca
The League of Canadian Poets

If All of My Relationships Fail and I Have No Children Do I Even Know What Love Is • National Poetry Month

If All of My Relationships Fail and I Have No Children Do I Even Know What Love Is

This fireman comes every afternoon
to the café on the corner
dressed for his shift in clean dark blues
This time       it’s the second Wednesday of January
and he’s meeting his daughter again
who must be five or six
and who is always waiting for her father like this
in her charcoal gray plaid skirt
with green and red stripes
She probably comes here straight from school
her glasses a couple nickels thick
 
By now I know     that she can sit       (except
for her one leg swinging from the chair)  
absolutely still      while her father pulls   
fighters’ wraps from his work bag
and begins half way down the girl’s forearm
winding the fabric in overlapping spirals
slowly toward her fist           then     he props      
her wrist      like a pro    on his own hand 
unraveling the black cloth   weaving it   
between her thumb and forefinger
around the palm             taut but
not so much that it cuts off the blood          then
up the hand and between the other fingers
to protect the knuckles         the tough    
humpback guppies just under the skin  
 
He does this once with her left       then again
to her right   To be sure her pops knows he has done
a good job     she nods        Good job       Good 
Maybe you’re right              I don’t know what love is
A father kisses the top of his daughter’s head
and knocks her glasses cockeyed
He sits back and downs the last of the backwash
in his coffee cup         They got 10 minutes to kill
before they walk across the street    down the block
and out of sight         She wants to test
her dad’s handiwork            by throwing  
a couple jab-cross combos from her seat
There is nothing in the daughter’s face  
that says     she is afraid     
There is nothing in the father’s face       
to say he is not                     He checks his watch         
then holds up his palms    as if to show his daughter    
that nothing is burning                     In Philadelphia
there are fires      I’ve seen those  in my lifetime too

by Patrick Rosal
Courtesy poets.org