The heat goes on and on.
The grinding of bulldozers
at the end of the street,
waterlines, hydrants going in.
The school is covered
with the dust of July.
I could endure the dirt, the noise,
the smell of concrete,
if Jackie and I could go to the play park
and swing and slide.
We are children of summer,
festivals,
day lengthening in jewels of light,
mirrors in the street,
breezes full of honeysuckle air,
sunflowers rising in the garden.
I told Jackie, this second year,
listen to the breathing of flowering dragons,
of swan like birds,
of bats gliding in the moonlight,
fireflies sprinkling the galaxy.
All that is summer,
summer land.
Then the machines came,
the violent weather of rocks
broken by bulldozers,
of cranes lifting their dinosaur necks
looking for prey,
volcanoes erupting,
and the roar of dry hurricanes
and tornadoes.
What will he remember next year?
It will be calm and green,
and dandelions will flood the grass,
and silence
will hang like blue silk in the sky,
and the monsters will have gone
to their yellow mountains of rock,
where they live.
And PaPa will explain,
that summer took a voyage
to the end of the world,
to find its birds and clouds
all whole and perfect,
and brought them back again.