The Summer I Was Sixteen
The turquoise pool ascended to meet us,
its slide a silver idea in retrospect down which
we dove, shouting, into a hallucination of air pockets.
We didn't exist past the look of a kid.
Shaking water off our appendages, we lifted
up from step rungs over the plant cool
lip of edge. Evening. Oiled and satisfied,
we sunbathed, climbed and paraded the solid,
moved to the low beat of "Duke of Earl".
Past cherry colas, wieners, Dreamsicles,
we went to the counter where honey bees amazed
into root brew containers and suffocated. We ate
cotton confection lights, sweet as quick kisses,
shared on seats underneath summer shadows.
Cherry. Elm. Sycamore. We spread our chenille
covers crosswise over grass, squeezed radios to our ears,
mouthing the old words, at that point extricated
thin swimsuit lashes and rubbed child oil with iodine
crosswise over sunburned shoulders, hurling a look
through the steel at an impossible world.
