Summer

One fourth of my life has been summer,

short paroles from sentences diagrammed

in chalk and opened books, time looked

forward to and then spent mostly wondering

what to do with it. The time of year

that swings in my head like a screen door,

summer's a thing I step out to when I sleep:

a place of broad leafiness and bird song,

erased paths and roads of broken shells.

It arcs and wheels in my head like herring gulls

and bicycles, dizzy and hungry and joyous

until I'm called from the dream

by my young mother's voice. In the cool dark,

I listen to the first excited rumblings,

and wait in a fraction of eternity for a bell

to ring, an open door to bring a warm slice of sky.