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Sunday Drive

summer fades away

By Harper Lewis Published 11 months ago β€’ Updated 11 months ago β€’ 1 min read
Top Story - November 2025

Today was the last day of Indian Summer

in Western North Carolina, land of mountains, rivers, and trees.

I wanted to make love out in nature, under the birch, oaks, and pines,

but we never found a good place with a safe shoulder

to pull over and traipse through the woods with our blanket (we left the dog at home).

We built a fire when we got home and enjoyed a picnic on a pallet beside it,

woodsmoke infusing our very souls as we feasted on hummus, flatbread, salami, pomegranates, mango-ginger white stilton, and dark chocolate covered cherries, the dehydrated ones, not the weird gooey ones in the plastic trays in flat, rectangular boxes, and a stout beer.

The fire dwindled to embers and the North wind blew the scarlet leaves down from the sugar maples in the front yard, and we finished our picnic, came inside without finding soulful communion and slipped into a hot bath with candles, crystals, incense, and moonlight.

We’re in pajamas now, enjoying cold, rich vanilla ice cream in bed, where the sweetness lingers like velvet melting into the marrow of my bones.

πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–

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nature poetryFree Verselove poemsFirst Draft

About the Creator

Harper Lewis

Intrusive rhyme bothers me, except as a weapon.

Intertextuality is my passion.

Formalist/ New Critical are my guiding theories.

My words are mine, not a robot’s.

MA English literature, CofC

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    Written by Harper Lewis