No one calling us home

Photo by Sergei Gussev, Published in iPoetry

An old oak tree by the fence, limbs easy to reach.
We climbed to the fork where squirrels had left cracked shells.
Sun pinned our shadows to the bark.

We don't deserve such pleasure, just as we don't deserve pain.
It arrives unbidden, like thunder after a long stillness.
Still, we tilt our heads to it.

Dairy Queen chocolate melting down my chin,
sugar-sticky fingers drying in the wind.
We were ten.
We rode toward the lake
fields behind us humming with heat.
Dropped our bikes. Peeled off our shorts.
The water warm enough, the sky going soft.
No one watching but the bats.

The fact that make this pleasure possible:
A neighbor who didn't mind the noise.
The chain that held.
A mother who didn’t ask where we were.
Linda who brought the Prell.

She poured it slowly. I knelt waist-deep.
Hands worked through my hair
until it lathered–green and sharp.
I dunked under.
The suds swirled away like something holy.

We don't deserve this -
The lake holding us up,
The freedom of being ten, barefoot, and
Laughing.
Hair clean in the dark.
No one calling us home just yet.

And then
Lightning bugs blinking in the bushes,
Small lanterns rising like prayers.
That's the best part,
how summer doesn’t end all at once,
but lingers,
glowing.