Summer Serenade

By Elise Skidmore

A New Yorker by birth, Elise Skidmore lives on the south shore of Long Island with her husband. Recently retired, they enjoy spending time together and love to travel. Their nest may be empty, and though she misses her two daughters, she is very proud of the wonderful women they have become.

She has been a writer since childhood, with poetry being her focus for many years. It’s her way of working through dark times and celebrating the joyful ones. SUMMER SERENADE is her fifth volume of poetry. Two of her earlier anthologies were finalists for Epic eBook Awards. She is also an amateur photographer and her original photography can be seen in all her books. While one may summarize Elise in any number of wonderful descriptors, chief among them must always be writer.

I’ve read POEMS FROM THE EDGE OF SPRING, and can highly recommend it! The sort of book you can pick up for a moment’s respite or inspiration or just sit and read from piece to piece, always entertained/comforted/made to think. Lovely Book!
—Diana Gabaldon, NYT bestselling author of the OUTLANDER SERIES

Poignant and lyrical, every sentence is a gem.
—Karen White, NYT bestselling author of the The Tradd Street series

Warm and accessible, Ms. Skidmore’s poetry shines. Her love of the the simple things, of home and family, evokes memories and feelings common to us all, and her sure hand strokes the iron string that runs through every heart.
—Dale Cramer, award winning author of KISS OF THE JEWEL BIRD

If you love poetry, WHEN LEAVES FALL will fill a new corner of your heart. If you think you don’t like poetry, it’s achingly simple beauty will prove you wrong.
—Linda Grimes, author of Tor Books’ Ciel Halligan series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heart Ally Books, LLC
• Release date: Aug 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781631070594

Elise Skidmore

Elise Skidmore is a native New Yorker, who has been writing poetry since she was a child. In 1994, when her husband and several of her friends were trying to get her interested in email and switching from a typewriter to a computer, she stumbled upon Compuserve’s Literary forum (Today it’s called the Books and Writers Community). There she met a bunch of wonderful people, including her favorite author, Diana Gabaldon, who helped broaden her horizons and delve into fiction writing as well as poetry. She eventually joined the staff, spending nearly 10 years as the section leader of the Writing Exercises and in Compuserve’s Poetry Forum. In 2004, when Compuserve opened to the web, she and a friend started a private writers’ forum called SectionSixx, which nurtured writers for more than 10 years.Elise lives on Long Island with her husband of 40+ years and feels blessed to have had the best parents, husband, and children a woman could ask for. The strong bonds of family are often the subject of her writing, but there aren’t many topics she’s afraid to tackle, including stories of vampires, devil possession, WWII POW camps, and gunslingers in the old west.Her hobbies include reading, photography, travel, and making people smile.

Book preview

Summer Serenade by Elise Skidmore

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

You Wanted a Story

How Is The Hardest Question

Thinking About Poetry

Nerves

For the Birds

More or Less

Sleepless On A Rainy Night

Spring Forward

Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News

Young Enough

Memorandum

Dream of the Old Days

I Am My Mother's Daughter

The World in Your Eyes

My Mother's Spaghetti Sauce

Taboo Tabu

Conflict of Interests

Future Haiku

Love Snapshots

Good Deeds Sometimes Get Rewarded

Awfully Funny

An Indoor Girl at Heart

Accidental Aftermath

Listening

Calling the Operator

Since You Have My Number

A Sight for Sore Eyes

We All Scream For Ice Cream!

Thinking of You

July 4th in the Land of the Brave and Home of the Free

How Tom Sees It

The Cat in the Fish Tank

Hungry Sea

Paradise

Thoughts During Pride Month

What You Didn't See

Misguided

If Wishes Were Horses

I Sweat the Small Stuff

Truth or Dare

Resolve

Blow Out The Candle

Tator

The Power of Music

Jackass

The Panel

Running With Wild Horses

My Father Told Me A Story

Connection

The Myth of Love at First Sight

I Don't Love You

Love's Necklace

Soulmates

The Kiss

For You

Sleep Isn't What It Used To Be

You Weren't Fooling

Voices in the Night

Little Things

Thoughts on Marriage

Just Saying

To B or Not To B

You Are Here

The Last Days of Summer

Savor the Now

Acknowledgments

Also by Elise Skidmore

Summer Serenade

Illustrations and text copyright © 2023 by Elise Skidmore

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Published by:

Heart Ally Books, LLC

26910 92nd Ave NW C5-406, Stanwood, WA 98292

Published on Camano Island, WA, USA

www.heartallybooks.com

ISBN-13: (epub) 978-1-63107-059-4

ISBN-13: (paperback) 978-1-63107-064-8

ISBN-13: (hardback) 978-1-63107-056-3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

butterfly

Dedication

To anyone who has ever held a seashell to their ear

and heard the ocean singing

rainbow ice cream in paper bowls with plastic spoons

You Wanted a Story

You asked me to tell you a story, but I have none to tell. That’s not exactly right. I have lots of stories, but I’ve told them all so many times, I don’t think they bear repeating. You told me to make something up, so I tried to remember how I made up scenarios for my dolls when I was a child. They were so vivid, my mother used to think I had friends over, but it was only me.

Ah, but I’ve told you that story before. I tried to recall the imaginary games I played when I was a child and thrived on make-believe: school teacher, movie star, rock singer, rock singer’s girlfriend, a model, someone—anyone--who wasn’t me. I remember pretending, but now it seems the stories were all the same. They always had love at the core and they always had a happy ending.

Some people write novels, but I’m not one of them. I have tried, but I’m a poet at heart, which requires fewer words and less plotting. Poems are more about thoughts and feelings, than plot, conflict, and resolutions. I’ve had some luck with short stories, but even those tend to be vignettes, largely focused on characterization. I tend to leave them wanting more, which may or may not be a good thing. They say write what you know and I avoid conflict whenever possible. That may work in real life, but makes for dull stories. I know because I’ve read books where the author shared my issues with conflict, where all problems were easily solved to get to the happily ever after. As a reader, those books left me wanting. As a writer, they highlighted my weakness.

A friend of mine, who does write novels, told me I should look at