Summer Blooms

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I remember the soft scented evenings
of summer, when I was a girl:
peony and lilac, sweet pea and nasturtium,
japonica and geranium and tall hollyhocks
in my grandmother's garden.

I liked to think the garden
was a village for fairies,
who took shelter under the leaves
during afternoon thunderstorms.
I remember the smell of earth
rising up, sharp, metallic,
in the moments just before the rain,
my Grandma and I exchanging smiles
in her back porch.
How she loved a good thunderstorm!
I love them still; that smell of coming rain
always takes me back to
summertime Kelowna, in the 60's.

And I am fifteen again,
standing under white blossoms in City Park,
as a brown-eyed boy hands me a bloom,
sweetly saying: "Poor man's orchid,"
just before my first
broken heart.

for Susan's prompt at Midweek Motif: Flowers