Where did the summer go
everyone keeps asking
pointing their phones at their faces
hump days and Friday eves
across the called ways of free crooked patched
concrete cracked with the heat of too much
weight and too much speed and too
much everything
accumulated crumbs in the keyboard with the
worn thin e and an a missing a leg up on
the rest with the forty hours turned fifty so
paychecks pile for the firepit glow
stoking a weekend of three like how it started in
a backyard smelling of lilies and a bony robin
death wouldn't give back so he’s resting
in brown dirt that started as black
nights hazed in fleeting horizons hued pink blue
skewed through September as June with
cicadas and decades echoing hard
around fenced squares humid stained
from uncut edges
not tucked tight enough in corners
and all the sheets and the covers she
stole with a slow past midnight roll
that was the fourth, I think, independence signed
by the fifth, I had them, of August that is
the time we’d been around the sun
again
waiting for a moon full bluer than
the ocean we chose to be nearer at
least we stretched on the beach a few
times or was it twice feeding crabs carrots
when the lifeguards lost that little boy that’s
what the mother said it was their job
to scratch the tickles of tall grass
across toes poking front from sandals while
we sipped Trader Joe’s rose in keep it
cold tumblers watching that hummingbird
splash reminding to keep a lid on it all
where did the summer go
everyone keeps asking
pointing their phones at their faces
1. Cover photo design by Author, from a Daoudi Aissa photo, Unsplash.
© Copyright William Hazel, 2023