Summer Nights

 Summer Nights

A poem bubbles in me
peroxide on an open wound.
I simmer in the humidity
of lost summers.

Childhood summers melt together
like crayons left in the yard.

When I was eleven,
summer nights were hide-n-seek
and sneaking into the garage
with a boy four years older than me.

The warmth of his hands
was like the first taste of
grapefruit sprinkled with sugar
but then it all goes sour.

Summer tears burn worse than
bare feet on hot asphalt.

Now the nights are sticky
too sticky even for sex,
so we lie nude, barely touching
we ache for relief.

Longing vibrates from deep inside
like the reedy resonance of a Native flute.
There is beauty in desire
and in reaching for each other
in mild minutes before sunrise.

On the front porch cigarette smoke curls.
June bugs cling to the screen door
and hiss when it slams.
They remind us how to laugh.

_________________________________________

The cigarette smoke was from my ex. I've never been a smoker. 

The summers in upstate NY are so humid. We used to joke that our youngest son would never have been conceived if we hadn't bought a window air conditioner.