Brick City Birthday Girl

There is a thrumming drone
of Quiet Cool
versus Hayward filter,
bubbled up with beads
of late evening horseplay –
cannonballs jumped off the side fence,
dusted with specks of HTH,
and tired cicada banter,
twisted timeless and tipping
into moonlit-gilded
white birch bark.
Late June crackling and crunching beneath our Dr. Scholl’s
– Goddamnit,
why do those trees do that so early
in the summer,
Daddy bitches –
Wet summer
dripping hair and noses,
just inside the arctic-promised AC shivering
– don’t get my kitchen floor wet,
Mommy shrills –
It’s the only feeling of summer love
I know –
white teeth against tanned lips and towel-dried dampness,
yawning back for tomorrow,
when there will be more
Wimbledon grunts
and Nestea plunges,
pink stung shoulders,
bare toes sunk
into soaking outdoor carpet.
If only I knew how to say it,
I would tell you
how bright the sun laced through
to my skin
and the pith of the warmest months
bleached and smoothed me wild,
levitating hazily between summers
wished for dreamt of hoped for
and those that were.
Dispassionately reassured
until the magical 15 minutes of dusk are over,
I belt one last Mala Femmina
into the ragged, chewed tip of the
Fla-Vor-Ice
turned to liquid in my hot hands –
hold my nose and dive
into shaded water
– Jerry Vale doesn’t have a blue tongue,
Nonni teases –
because I’m always a scooch’a dement
laughs the birthday girl,
knowing she does as she pleases today
and every day.
LAD
6/26/12