Sultry Season

On that next sweltering August night
when sweat beads and annoys with
pools like mercury cloying on
your middle aged wrinkling skin

and you grumpily curse that half-hearted
air conditioner whining and thumping
in spurts next door like a 2 am drunken plumber,

you might remember other summers
when torrid eves and sky-high sun
were sure signs of such complete
pure pleasure:

cherry popsicles sweet and cold
delivered by the bell ringing ice
cream man,
the knowing that there’s no school
for six or more long and grateful weeks,
frozen milky ways so hard you must
admit your teeth may have met their match,

hamburgers flipped on shiny barbeques
as a sprinkler sifts and sashays
like Astaire across a broad backyard,
consecutive days of barefeet braving
bumblebee lawns and black molten
pavement, city lava sticks like ink
to your pinkly calloused toes

(shoeless so many days you forget
where your shiny loafers will be found
in deep and dark September),

and your first real crush,
the feel of another’s warm
soft hand tentative in yours’
and that summer wind tousling
two heads of hair as shyness melts
like a liquefied fudgesicle
you kiss her quick,
just once before you and your heart
skip grinning toward those exhilarating
safe lights of home and the golden
cinnamon kitchen,

oh yes that summer wind
how it carried laughter and freedom
with your crewcut pals
through the neighborhood down
the long summer blocks where you sped
like dragonflies mischievously flitting
from this moment to that, simply scurry
on pedaling Schwinns in patient eternal hurry,

enough to last a lifetime
if you’re luckily willing
to hold childhood’s summery pluck
close like a yo-yo spinning
fast at day’s end or a mitt
of dusky brown well-worn leather
stained with streaks of sugary goodness

after frozen crimson treats shed their sticks
of balsa,
coat glistening happy this
your sultry awesome season,

speak in living color to a later
older self of future
wondrous summers.