The Rest of Summer
S. Michael SimmsThe creak of that Tennessee porch-swing’s a tireless Junebug
trapped in the amber of my all-growed-up ear – a metronomeof mortal awareness of what I left hanging there along with youth
and the rest of summer – once upon a time, summer was mine…Three generations of cinnamon skin cousins, three or four wide,
pushed, pulled, treaded water-thick air with gangly appendages.How we’d hyena as it cussed in Chainese, launching Aladdin’s rug,
a rocket ship, giant eagle, whatever we dreamed that day skyward,surging through layers untold of pre-season paint jobs, a new hue
for each aestival stanza of our lives. Near the bottom, Redand the memory of flight— a little bird fallen, broken – poor thing;
I’d no real healing powers, so I lifted it, spun around, left it beneatha shade tree with some earthworms, red snotberries and the memory
of flight. Turquoise was clover, flesh, pink and fresh, one dancingbarefoot through the other; Navy Blue, a neighbor kid; Sea Green,
neighbor kid kisses, back to Red…I lost track in a waterfall rainbowof lightning bug lamps, wheat-pennies, moss-covered birdbaths, aging
crates of Lincoln logs and Tonka trucks. Now that Tennessee swing’son some faraway family’s grayscale porch. I drove by the day they carted
it away— grounded by Little Grandma’s ghost, it slumped to one side,one invincible wing suspended by a single, rusted chain, the other broken,
Swiss cheesed by carpenter ants, flecked with paint chips like fallen snow.