CHALLENGE PREVIEW: The CPC Friday Fling Sings Around the Campfire!
This is a special preview for the CPC Friday Fling poetry challenge. Poems should be posted there when the challenge opens Thursday at 9 PM EDT.
Friday Fling #136 July 8th 2011
Now that we are past the signature “midsummer” celebration on the Fourth of July (even though it really comes less than two weeks after the official START of Summer), it’s all downhill from here. Right to the campground, or for many kids, summer camp!
Are you like me and when you couldn’t afford to have the whole family stay in a motel in an expensive summer resort area, and you loved the outdoors and wanted your kids to learn to love it, you took ’em camping? Oh. Well, I did.
For several years in the 1970s our summer campground of choice was Shawme Crowell State Forest on Cape Cod. Nothing like waking up to fresh pine air, then taking a short drive for a day at the beach.
Or if you are the wife and mother in the family, nothing like waking up to fresh pine air and have to wash dress two small children and yourself and cook your family breakfast on some sort of a grill. Which was, you guessed it, why we eventually stopped going camping.
Well after that I did take my kids camping myself for several summers, each year to a different campground in a different state. Lots of stories from those, most of which, fortunately I don’t remember.
No, I’m kidding. It was wonderful to bond with my children, especially since during much of the rest of the year I was busy preparing for all the classes I taught, or improving and maintaining the livabilityof our home.
Sorry I got so longwinded. But then I would not be me. Anyway, this week we thought you might enjoy being challenged to write about summer camping or summer camps past or present.
Cheryl suggests that if you need a muse, you could try to find it in a song title from the 1960s folk group Peter, Paul and Mary. As you can see in the poster above, they once did a whole record album about singing around a campfire!
You can find a vast list of their song titles here: http://www.peterpaulandmary.com/music/songlist.htm You could also take inspiration from the lyrics of any of their songs, or do a rewrite or interpretation of one.
This week the Friday Fling celebrates summer camps and camping!
Be sure to save time to read and comment refreshingly on your fellow Pals’ poetic adventures. Then go off to…summer camp? Your favorite campground? A nice motel? Your nice soft bed at home?
Fickle Finger of Fate Award for July 1st 2011
Congratulations Diane!
Fun indeed. Looking forward to it.
Peter, Paul, and Mary does remind me of my Girl Scout days. I remember us singing to ” Leaving On A Jet Plane” around the campfire along with other songs. See ya tonight (((Bob!)))
Peter Paul and Mary Songbook A-E in Story Form
From 24 Green Street,
we drove 500 Miles
for what seemed like 75 Septembers
When we arrived, we immediately began a soulin,’
which got all God’s critters all mixed up,
since we were all white.
I recalled all my trials
all through the night.
I was acquitted in every one of them
even though none were televised.
And when I die,
I expect you to apologize
From Autumn to May
like a whore of Babylon,
for turning me in oh, sinner man.
I will sing the Ballad of Spring Hill,
while you have bamboo shoots
shoved under your finger nails
in a dark dungeon in some beautiful city,
because all men are brothers,
We had been on the road too long.
back when we were the best of friends,
when you ran off with my girlfriends, Betty & Dupree
in my big boat, with your long, stringy hair
blowing in the wind.
Later I heard you have been squeezed to death
in an Amozonian jungle
by a blue boa constrictor.
Then someone said no,
that was just Bob Dylan’s dream.
Someone else said you were seen
outside a homelsee shelter in downtown Baltimore
asking passersby: brother, can you spare a dime?
But a moment later, yet someone else
took my by surprise
by announcing that you were in Canaan land,
with a character from Star Wars named Jar-Jar
who drove you around in his car-car.
I married and had twelve children.
When they were grown,
I wanted them all to go look for you.
“Children go where I send thee,” I told them.
My children, one and all, heeded my call
after Christmas dinner and a circus,
when I said: “come and go with me.”
Thus came the coming of the roads.
We looked everywhere,
even in the lair of the conscientious objector
from the cruel war.
Finally, at Danny’s Downs,
we could say our long day is done.
We found you, but delivery delayed
when UPS mixed you up with another deportee,
a Chinese guy named Dodi Li.
When we opened your crate,
you immediately said angrily,
“Don’t ever take away my freedom!”
But then you added,
“Don’t go down to the quarry,
and don’t laugh at me.”
I replied, “Don’t think twice, it’s all right.”
and we left you down by the riverside
early in the morning.
You caught pneumonia in the early mornin’ rain,
and died while fleeing to El Salvador.
Now you are gone,
and I and my Erika with the windy yellow hair
smell every flower.
Copyright July 7th 2011 RGD