Maybe it's the summer heat. Maybe it's because of the recent nomination of Jan Wong's Apron Strings for the 2018 Taste Canada Awards. Maybe it's because it's nearly dinnertime when this post is being prepared, and we're very hungry.

Whatever it is, we've got food on the brain. We cannot think of anything else.

Except poetry! Because it's Poetry Friday!

So let's combine our love of poetry with our need of sustenance with Patrick Warner's tasty, mouth-watering "The Chocolate Chip Pancake is Innocent" (from Perfection). 

If you're like us, right now you're holed up inside, praising the inventor of air conditioner.

By which we mean, it's very, very, VERY hot outside right now.

To take your mind off the prospect of walking across the surface of the sun on the way home, today's Poetry Friday entry has been specially chosen to give you a lot to mull over while you melt into the concrete.

Please enjoy Gary Geddes' intriguingly titled "Mahatma Gandhi Refuses an Invitation to Write for Reader's Digest" (from Active Trading).

Are you planning a Canada Day celebration? Can we come?

No?

Well, we'll provide you with some poetic summer imagery anyway, just because we're good like that.

Please enjoy Robert Gibbs' "Summer In With Goodness and Mercy" (from The Tongue Still Dances). 

Summer In With Goodness and Mercy 

This day's event   The word
surely crosses my mind   No

I've dandled you too long
worm not to spin you away

uncrushed (to trot yourself back
on all those feet is doom enough)

What's to come?   That's not
the question but what to make of all

this blue   this daylight   Aha
the fledgeling swallows dip

and crackle at the cat harrying her
the more the more she spits

They're showing off to their mother
how well they can do it   fall just short

of the murderous deft cuffings
This heat   these shadows

my own among them squat
under my chair   the sumachs and the triple

prickled thistles thorns and raspberries
drink light   Suppertime

a breeze   everything moves   birds from
everywhere their six callings

crowd one another then as suddenly
none   Someone's on my neck

You again or your wife-to-be looking
for a like reprieve?   fat blue-lit

overdue for sleep   see you've talked
me into talking and I flip you off

unsquushed another year's raid
between the two of you

O watch my shadow grow
Surely

that word again
flies in and out

It's SUMMER! OFFICIALLY! Goodbye, shoes! Hello, sandals!

Not in the office, you say? Very well. But we'll celebrate anyway!

To kick off summer, this Poetry Friday's selection is a slice of sun-dappled nostalgia, a trip back to summers past.

Please enjoy Kay Smith's "On Sundays in Summer" (from Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada).

Poems! They aren't always about camouflaged intentions and word-dappled landscapes and unspoken emotions!

Granted, most of them are, but still...

Anyway, this Poetry Friday we'd like to celebrate the poems that think outside the box (poemtarilly speaking), the poems that choose unusual subjects for their dark excursions into the subconscious. 

So please enjoy William Bauer's greatly enjoyable, greatly odd "The Rubber Bathtub Duck and the Rubber Bathtub Bear" (from Unsnarling String).

Read it in the tub if you wish. But don't blame us if you drop the book.