I’ve been scanning old (hard-copy) writings of mine from non-compatible computer files and whatnot.  In so doing, I came across a poem I wrote about summer and childhood and what we lose as we grow.  Perhaps because I so long for summer this year, perhaps because in my (biased) opinion, it’s pretty darned good for a maiden effort at poetry, here it is for you:

 

Barefoot With Shoes

Dirt Road

Nubbled, sharp, squishy
Powder dust between the toes
Walk along, little girl

There now — the road turns
Dust-sifted corn leads left-handed
Noon-time summer smells
Dry, salt-sweat, must, sun

Change

to

Sweet, heavy honeysuckle
Hot rubber
Baked steel

Hear

The stretched snap of the screen door
The slow creak of the tire swing
The lazy cackle of the Rhode Island hen

A dog barks into a whiteyellow blaze of sun

Stop then
Change dust footing
For prickly grass, sudden shade

A breeze lifts the hair
And chills the sweat

Now —

A meadowlark
And a tightness in the throat

So much to feel, smell, hear

And

–Don’t forget–

Stretch
Shinny
Slither

Reach the hot green apple
Let the tart juices
Sharpen dirt-dulled mouth

Summer

Summer that never was

I see it so clear

Smell it
Hear it
Taste it
Feel it so clear

I could walk barefoot into it

This

Minute

Walk out of here into there
Walk out of now into then

Barefoot, chewing a green stalk of wheat

But–

I am so grown now

No matter how I walk
I am still here

Still now

No matter how I walk
I am not there

Not then

Oh summer
Summer that never was

Even barefoot
I still wear shoes