Dear Maxine, Love Letters by Don Price “Suddenly It was Summer”

Suddenly it was Summer

Dear Maxine,

Suddenly it is Summer. The Summer of 2018.

Summer was always my favorite time of the year.

The bursting flowers. The blooming trees.

Fresh Yellow buttercups. Amazing Pink Cherry blossoms.

Flowers of Red, Orange, White and Purple.

Everywhere the rich living green. Glowing with new life.

The long bright days. Peaceful blue skies. Puffy white clouds.

Suddenly it is Summer…the Summer of 2018.

The second Summer without you.

I used to love to bring you the first flower of spring.

I used to bring apple blossoms for you to smell and enjoy and put them in a little glass next to your bed.

Then there were the amazing Honeysuckles, a true sign of Summer. What a scent.

I would bring you fresh Honeysuckle to smell and you would smile.

We could see the bare trees turn green, lush and full outside your window, new Life exploding in the long bright days.

I would rush to show you the first sprouts for our garden. The first fragrant tomato plant from our green house.

We would dream together of the fresh organic salad we would be making very soon.

We would smile and laugh together and say “We’re so lucky”.

But now it’s the Summer of 2018. The second Summer without you.

The flowers don’t seem so bright anymore.

The grass does not seem as rich and green.

The scent of the Honey suckle is not so bewitching.

I don’t seem to care anymore about working in the green house.

The garden boxes are full of weeds.

The long bright days often go unnoticed, as I stay inside and work alone. 

Suddenly Summer…isn’t so fun anymore.


The Summer of 2018.

The second Summer without you.

My heart still feels like Winter. Cold and grey.

The way it was when you left.

Bare branches. No signs of Life.

But then I remember the first tiny, bursting flowers of Spring.  

The first flowers, coming up out of the cold and dark and frozen Earth.

They care not how cold it was. How the frost tore at their roots.

They hung on as fierce Winter storms broke the branches of giant trees above them.

They survived short dark days, the barren ground frozen solid with ice.

Yes, they survived and now they burst forth, up, up out of the once frozen ground.

Up, up again toward the Sun. Always toward the Sun. Always toward the Light.

So brave they are! So audacious! They refused to die. They will live!

So they bloom and burst into a riot of colors yet again.

So if the tiny flowers can defy Death, if they can defy the dark, cold and frozen Earth…

If such tiny, delicate and fragile things can be so brave, bursting forth again and again into color and Life…

Then perhaps…so can I.

PK Willey

PK Willey, Ph.D., is an American, a Gandhian scholar, author and entrepreneur, who has delved deeply into Gandhi's Earth Ethics. Willey seeks to enhance philosophical discourse around the world where globalization has altered ethical values, particularly in the USA. Willey finds Gandhi's ideas, thoughts, and example, to be invaluable in this effort. Currently, besides numerous articles and book projects,Willey is developing a new framework for qualitative research that employs Earth Ethics, guided by a Gandhian compass and Weibust's Transformative Paradigm.

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