leaving home

that summer, the park ached

with the screams

and yips of kids and dogs

loosed upon it

 

it was green then,

pool full, moms with sunglasses

kids with flippers and sea monster floats

 

people burned weenies, took in a breeze,

smiled at each other

with beer foam moustaches

 

around, mamas sang in kitchens—

bread steam, meat-and-potato sear

floated over the baseball diamond

crawling with those spidery little guys

on St. Helena’s B-Team beating hell

out of St. John Francis Regis again—

 

porches creaked, smoldered with cigars

a hundred dogs on every block

raised the living and the dead

at each out-of-sync clock chime

 

anyone who had any money

bought grape pop in a bottle

a pack of luckies, or a snort of whiskey

and life was as good

as it was ever going to get

 

that summer, in the park,

in the pool, we watched

young mamas and older sisters

cross and uncross their legs,

snap their swimsuit tops

and pull the elastic out from behind

with index fingers

 

it was before life became knotty,

before the girls got pregnant,

and things went bad with cops

parents, brothers and sisters

 

and we all got the hell out

 

that summer was as good

as it was ever going to get

but there was no way to trace the lines

through the waves in the water

reflected in sunglasses

 

Published by

Patrick Dobson

Patrick Dobson was founded in 1962. He is a writer, scholar, ironworker, and poet who lives in Kansas City, MO. He is author of two books with the University of Nebraska Press, Seldom Seen: A Journey into the Great Plains (2009) and Canoeing the Great Plains: A Missouri River Summer (May 2015). Dobson is a work in progress until termination.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *