Summer's End

Only yesterday the sunshined schoolbus
ceased its daily orbit round the neighborhood.
We shrieked across the schoolyard,
books and teachers in our wake.
Freed from the solitary confinement of our desks
we wrote our names instead in jet trails
across the vast blue board of sky,
multiplied our hours by each blade of grass,
perfected the physics of skipping stones
and measured the depth and flow of creek and pond.
From grassy beds, we studied pinprick stars
in the planetarium of night
and wrapped ourselves in lush damp air
that sparkled with fireflies and magic.

Yet here we stand in August, three months gone--
with our barefoot mornings and lemonade afternoons,
days of watermelon on the porch
and thorny blackberry expeditions behind us,
learning once more the sweet alchemy of a peach
while the juice of summer
trickles through our fingers...