Midsummer, Tobago by Derek Walcott has a very special place in my heart. I have read it so many times yet the effect it has on me never faded. In each phase of my life, the poem has meant different things to me. There is always the huge wave of nostalgia for the summers of my childhood, followed by the country I think I have loved and lost. India is not what it once used to be except in the retelling of my childhood to J. There have been emerald green rivers and scorched Sal trees in my childhood, the beach where hot stones were skipped over to get to the water. On summer afternoons, we napped long hours. Days held and lost over and over. But today I feel closest to "days that outgrow, like daughters, my harboring arms." Only Walcott can give words to my incredible dread of the empty nest that is less than a year out.
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,
days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harboring arms.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,
days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harboring arms.
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