A Day for Shade

Tucked into a shallow
bowl of shady hills,
a gun-metal grey
saucer of a lake
reflects the silhouette
of a small bird of prey
hunting on wings back-swept,
shadowing skylarks and pipits,
playing tag with cumuli
scudding their own penumbrae.

Kim M. Russell, 2017

Related image

Image found on britainandbritishness.com

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics – Seeking Some Shade Today? and linked to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Tuesday Platform

Lillian tells us that they have had a number of heat waves in Boston this summer, officially described by meteorologists as at least three consecutive days when temperatures reach or exceed 90° F / 32.2° C. She says that when she was growing up, they used to say you could fry an egg on the sidewalk on days like these. Her dad always said It’s a hundred degrees in the shade! Which got her to thinking about that word, shade and sayings such as:

‘Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?’ Benjamin Franklin

‘He’s a shady character!’

‘Every shade of feeling finds its expression on a face.’

Lillian says that there are shade trees, window shades, shades of color, shades of difference, and shades of improvement. Synonyms include shadow, blackness, coolness, dusk, gloominess, semidarkness, obscurity, cover, and a wonderful word that rolls off the tongue, penumbra! She has also shared one of my favorite all-time songs,’Whiter Shade of Pale’.

Lillian would like us to write a poem that includes the word shade, or a derivation of it. We may add a synonym if we wish…but the poem must include the word shade.

 

42 thoughts on “A Day for Shade”

  2. “Scudding their own penumbrae” .. is that like chasing their own tail? (smile) I grew up with the phrase 100 degrees in the shade too…and spent many a steamy summer afternoon in the shade of an elm tree in our yard reading the books of Zane Grey given me by a cousin!

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  11. This is a really good response to the D’Verse challenge, and adds a ghostly silver to “shade” in birds that are “playing tag with cumuli / scudding their own penumbrae” there in the reflection of a lake.

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