When midnight flips
And the stars stare disapprovingly
Grip your elbows, bundle your sweater
And start toward the porch.
Summer slips over your teeth
on the lick of a mussel.
Cat tails salute that sinful sun.
You stare into a fistful of sand…
Four hundred fossils…
Long Island Sound reclaims its history
from your hand in a billow of surrender.
and drags you toward Christmas.
Twelve years of five and dimes
leave you yearning for notebooks and pens,
stiff jeans and the plastic smell of sneakers.
Your mother worries; it’s a new bus route.
August blares in cicadas’ incessant drone.
Taste Autumn in the smoke of a charcoal grill
Summer is as slippery as sweat
And as evasive as shade at a family picnic.
And the stars stare disapprovingly
Grip your elbows, bundle your sweater
And start toward the porch.
Summer slips over your teeth
on the lick of a mussel.
Cat tails salute that sinful sun.
You stare into a fistful of sand…
Four hundred fossils…
Long Island Sound reclaims its history
from your hand in a billow of surrender.
and drags you toward Christmas.
Twelve years of five and dimes
leave you yearning for notebooks and pens,
stiff jeans and the plastic smell of sneakers.
Your mother worries; it’s a new bus route.
August blares in cicadas’ incessant drone.
Taste Autumn in the smoke of a charcoal grill
Summer is as slippery as sweat
And as evasive as shade at a family picnic.
Your poem brought me back there. Those years of five and dimes! Yet Main Street seemed so cold. Summer does slip through our fingers; time insists on moving. Follow the sand.
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