It’s the day before summer.

I’m searching my memory

for hints of what it used to be

like, that summer free.

I’d like to know, what I can expect

once tomorrow comes,

what I can require.

Waking up to a breakfast

of something, nothing special,

followed by some activity.

*

Back to a classroom- not my usual.

Something to explore.

It’s not math, it’s not a worksheet – don’t worry.

How do you feel?

How about

responding to the colors,

slashes of emotion, sharpened,

lucidly expressing something

in a magazine cutout?

What do I think of that?

*

Or, holding large coffee-table books

with awesome images

cool against my bare knees, then sealed there

it remains as I search for

words to string into poetry?

*

The blast of cold that rampages my skin

as I step into the sanctuary, heavily wooded

with printed volumes

and run over by strollers and retirees.

Hours later, weighed down to wobbly,

I stagger out carrying bricks

of someone else’s histories.

Some I may put down, laying them

before me as a path of “nexts” to step onto.

What a good idea!

*

And this – what,

the smell of the inside of a theater,

the heat of the lights beating down

as I nervously remind myself of my lines.

*

A stroll in the town center,

am I looking for something?

Maybe, but why not stop for

a treat, at the bakery?

Great idea – let’s sit a while.

this same spot I like to visit,

but what else do I see now?

 *

Homeward, fly!

The rumble starts,

the air conditioning resumes

to each his own bubble,

close the doors.

The day’s

cooled thoughts settle to the bottom,

warm ones rise like iridescent bubbles.

*

Before dinner,

I pick up a book, with a casual appetite,

that soon intensified, so rapidly I tear through.

I’m there. Wherever.

It’s summer, so I’m free to be there,

as long as I please.

No homework to do, except easy summer reads.

Time to eat! – How I dreaded those words in summer,

for I’d really, much rather, pick up and leave

again, the hallways in my imagination

so easily and deftly furnished by

summer’s muses, awakened and at work

piecing together a collage of lots of days,

a scintillating decoupage of nothing-special’s.

*

Step back, slowly, see

the leaves from newest greens

to burning reds turn,

and enter, stage left,

amidst a glowing, warm embrace

another season, in.

composed 6-19-12