A poem for summer. . . remember when we were buoyed by such playful innocence? This poem was first published in Clayjar Review: Lake Day
Lake Day We splash the clouds, slapping what floats on our wet playground, laughing in the mirrors of liquid magic— we jump in the galactic from docks, where light streaks the surface in a glitter of daystars and we drift over mountains on rafts, peering beneath for creatures, for secrets; our ripened bodies lunge across the swells, and cedar-chains blanket the shoreline as we walk their water ghosts— we spring for the up-side down, what we kick with our feet and spit through the puckered lips of all our pretend, swashing such fancies that glow in the day’s glint, bolstered by waves that slide through fingertips— then buoyed by the day’s end, we spring from the depth-less, leap to dry ground, and wrap our bright bodies in towels, looking to the sky up . . . into the oak tree looming over our frames, its weathered arms spreading its breadth, its age, its sense, across our banks— and through its limbs we spy the same billows, what our fists sloshed, what we tossed in the child-mirrors of our shallows and we collapse like shadows groundward, to the rooted, coughing up candor of youth, and puffed perceptions— only to search the waters silly and shy— shivering in the gaze of sun-dried reflections.