Tag Archives: Summer

The Useful and The Condemned

Crazy beginnings to hot summer days
begin slow walks to the neighborhood fountain.

     Walking slow begins the neighborhood fountain
     where neighbors scream sitting on porches.

Screams shouted from the front porch by neighbors
are ignored by the dogs fighting in the dirt.

     Ignored by the dogs fighting in the dirt
     I walk by carrying a load precious to me.

Precious are the loads I carry walking
through the flower beds of yellow day lilies.

     Through the flower beds of yellow day lilies
     steps part the ways between useful and condemned.

The useful and the condemned part ways between steps
on crazy beginnings to hot summer days.

A Summer Afternoon

Fascinating images from long ago glitter in the grass.
A daughter runs through a sprinkler across the wet  lawn.
Another turns the page while sitting on the driveway reading.
Still another calls for me to give her a push on the swing.

I ignore the silent roaring of time feeling my very bones become old.
The neighbor makes himself known with a call and a wave.
A dead man out of mind, a forgotten ancestor, rises to play.
Buckets and toy shovels wait in the sandbox where some grass grows.

The soundlessness cannot last all the bright day long, can it?
I look around for my hiding place we built the previous winter in the snow.
All I see is the length of reflected light stretching toward my eyes.
In the water the nightscapes dance as a promise after the sun goes down.

Magic Summer

Adults sit on folding lawn chairs
set in a circle around a fire along
the south bank of the Rock River.
Their laughter, the cicada buzz
and the occasional boat throttling
mixed with children shouts 
from joyful jumps off the dock 
into the water create summer 
for me in my mind.

But not until Grandpa poured 
his Old Style into a clear, tall glass; 
not until he handed me the salt shaker 
to tap a few times into the foam;
not until the salt settling at the bottom 
began to work the magic of bubbles in beer;
not until I saw alchemy before my very eyes
was I then free to run and leap into water
endlessly flowing by the party.