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