My Childhood Summer
Note****I wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I do know it is December, but this poem demanded an outing, so here it is. When they want to be. We may be mere Serb ants. I am planning to do a Poetics blog about such things. Please watch for it. Here goes...
Childhood Summer
Room’s so hot I can’t sleep,
My fan’s the size of a bread plate
And it’s spinning shakes
The table it’s set on. Just
Me in the harsh night, while
I see through my open window,on
The street below nothing moves
To stir up air and send it in.
I lie attuned to the night.
Wiping sweat off my brow.
Slapping a crawling fly off my thigh.
I go down to the kitchen where
Mom sits as I know I will find her,
With five newspapers half-read,
A glass with whiskey and water, its
Ice melted, half-drunk. She wipes
The sweat from her brow. I glance up,
The clock cookoo’s two a.m. and
She says, “Couldn’t sleep?”
Truth.
I answer, “Right.”
Is
At her elbow, the radio news
Broadcasts, ”86 degrees.”
It’s the tropics come to live in New Jersey
In 1965, so there’s no central air and
The fan in the kitchen is only the size
Of a dinner plate, rattling the metal stovetop
Where it sits making no difference.t5
Heat rises. I stay in the kitchen; stretch out
To sleep on the floor. Mom, I hear, rises
With a newspaper in hand and walks
To the screen door, to lean out, to fan herself,
As if the difference mattered.
*******. ********. ********. *******
(C) sally Young eslinger 12/18/2020
Thanks be to God
Copyright © Sally Eslinger | Year Posted 2020
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