Late afternoon, University
Where the sun catches bleachers
Casting time across the tiniest slice of playing field.
A staccato “Hup! Hup!”
“Hup!” Of a frisbee scrimmage.
.
“Here!”
.
The hum of a campus in early summer,
Where the players’ cries, hoots and woots
Tick away a timeless place between the
Hourly bell toll.
.
On the seventh lap around the rubber track,
That echoing bell marks religion
Just in case we missed it.
.
A light breeze ruffles tree tops above the stadium
While down here, all is still
Just foot steps, slap of hand on frisbee,
sound of breeze in this still field,
Like a reminder of a world out there.
.
“No! No! Here!”
.
An easy time filled with gentle ripples
You know, the kind that form when
Memories, place, sound and light
Move together.
.
The kind that pull up poems
From that time I sat with her at the beach
And gently reached my arm out to hold her.
From then on, the distance between us grew.
It was the last time we felt the wind together.
.
Now,
Summer,
Rolling in enamel bliss
That will not wear off over a
sky shadowed, cast in vapor
Illumed by the fading light of an afternoon:
Like when Autumn became Spring
for just one day.
.
That was what we remembered
When we didn’t know that this kind of day
Not the faintest idea,
That today could be the richest of them all.
.
Maybe because it was the quietest.
Like I said:
Late afternoon summer.
The bell tolling another hour
Like some silly notion
That time might be slipping by.
“Ha!”
Shaken Rain 