summer

Silver Circle

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you may have taken it once
but now you slide it into my palm
like a shiny new silver coin
cold and sleek against the nerve endings
i clutch it with my fingertips,
pressing, hoping it will soak up
our bodies’ heat.

(we can pretend) that you really did
snatch that shining circle out of the sky
years back or months ago
it is ours now
i open my fingers and place it
on the rough center of my tongue
(despite my efforts, its purity
keeps it cool in my mouth)

you want a taste
and its light encircles us in the yard
crickets singing love songs
wind tickling the still-summer leaves
stars peeking out, competing for room
distant traffic reminding us where we are
(we are here, we are here, we are here!)

i give it to you
the silver circle that you know i love
that we love together
and with our lips open (our hearts open)
we pass our moon back and forth.
the cold seeps away, draining into the bed
of warmth, of love we have created here tonight.

Warriors

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don’t go off the sidewalk
we warn as they abandon
their ice cream remnants
and dash to their brief
moment of freedom.

fearless leader number one
follows the handicap ramp
to its very edge, dangles
her arm like a proud warrior
over the parking lot,
two mini warriors behind,
waiting, watching, weaning
themselves into a new era
of independence.

D & F Tower

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As stated matter-of-factly
hundreds of times, this tower
(brick-not-steel, pointed
and dominant) was the tallest
building in Denver when

at age twenty-one, like the
pioneers two generations back
(two generations back from me)
my great-aunt Frances walked
through downtown (1937)

We enter it for the first time in
my life tonight, year twelve of
our young marriage. “Finally,”
you say, “something you haven’t
already done,” opening the door for me.

Did she see it? Painted crown molding
on the ceilings, intricately laid
white marble (smooth and cool
against the skin on a summer night),
architecture from a bygone era.

Would she care about the cabaret
burlesque show that emanates from
the basement stairwell? Or did she know,
with her domineering, independent shoes
that carried her here from Kansas,

that, just like the steel-concrete-glass
skyscrapers that have tried to trump this,
it still stands in a changing world,
here we stand in a changing world,
its strength (our strength) unwilling to give up
its place in the heart of the city (of love).

Encounter

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you sit like a tiny blue frog
hidden in the twilight on
a lily pad surrounded by black water

almost impossible to see
but i know you’re there
hiding out, zippy tongue ready

in a moment, you will snatch
away my summer, swallowing
my girls as if they were annoying flies.

i can’t disappear from this encounter,
but only work my way closer, ready
to pry you open, releasing them, in spring.

When Reality Returns

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my legs ache from want
of the bike paths, of women on bikes,
mosquitoes and fleas now eat me alive
and i miss my mountain peaks
but
i feel i will miss this more
the gurgling babyhood smiles
the hickory-oak-taller-than-buildings forests
the relentless rivers and rains
the stick-to-the-skin heat
and everything i should hate
that i have head over heels
fallen in love with
but mostly
our family, our (second) home,
knowing the hollowness that will
sit between the hours of my days
when reality returns
and i will have to live without.

July Daughters

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Mythili

you are a fish
swimming all day
a proclamation against the heat
losing all of last year’s fear
and washing it away with intrepid dives
into the pool that you proudly stand up in,
reminding me that you are
almost (but not quite)
a six-year-old mermaid
whose summer of swimming
will soon end with a splash.

Isabella

at your sisters’ request
they have segregated themselves
into the far back.
most oldest daughters would love a chance
just one
to be alone
but your lip pouts its way down the interstate.
i sit beside you and flip out two auto bingo boards.
within five minutes you have won,
within fifty miles your board is almost full,
within three hours we’ve gone through
every Extreme Nature card
and your only request
is that the ride will never end.

Riona

you are an echo of your sisters’ enthusiasm
the squeals of delight
tagging just seconds behind theirs
as we pull into the hotel parking lot
you shout, “They have a fancy fountain!”
only a nanosecond after Isabella.

this i could remember most
as it happens daily.
but what will make me most proud
will be the fourteen flights of stairs
that you climbed up
one foot on one step, another on the next
(remember when you were almost two
and couldn’t even stand?)
not one time, but two in a ten-hour day,
my soon-to-be-four-year-old
advancing to the top
of a milestone I will never forget.

We Have Won

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Twenty perfect pictures
A cry-free four hour drive
Thrilled squeals that last for miles
A dip in the end-of-maze pool
A local restaurant in a sea
Of red jerseys and sauce
On the way to the stadium
With an ocean of red jerseys and lust

It’s summer and the sun has set
On fourteen flights of stairs up
The arch glistens from city lights
Alongside the river of all rivers
Our room sees it and smiles with pride
For we have won, we have won,
Our team, us, them, we have won.

Statistics

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temperature: 87
sunset: 8:30
ETA: 8:52
humidity: 70
miles: 5.2
mosquitoes: 1.1 million
times down the slide: 100
gulps of Gatorade: 50
cars waiting to pass: 10
songs on the iPod: 40
streetlights lighting up: 11
runners speeding past: 2
girls on a bike: 4
love: 100%

It Isn’t Enough

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it isn’t enough to be ten feet from
the door of our tent to the shore of the lake,
to paddle out into the cove side by side
for a miniature version of a date

it isn’t enough to swim with three girls
in ring-around-the-rosy circles into the night,
the campfire’s afterglow and the Milky Way
lighting their way into the warmth of their beds.

it isn’t enough to stay for one summer
because it could never capture our midnight swim,
our skinny-dipped rekindling after a week’s absence,
the fact that we haven’t lived,
we have never lived,
until the deep-down,
sparkling starlit beauty
of this moment in Kentucky.

June Daughters

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Isabella

While at first reluctant,
you have given in to riding
our connected bicycle,
stating quite simply, in your
I’m-seven-and-overheard-your-conversation
voice, “I want to spend time with you.”
Your keen observations along the route,
of roads previously untraveled,
family sightings, and hill monitoring,
only add to the noticeably stronger
pedal power that you offer.
We beat them home and you are as
proud as a new mother, displaying our
connected contraption with hands
outspread in a beauty queen pose,
our time together warranted by
your everlasting desire to win
(oh how I already know you
will always, always win).

Mythili

We are at the beach.
It may be fake (a river turned into a lake),
but you have managed to discover
seashells in perfect conical shapes
(the ones I searched for in vain at the
real beach when I was your age).
We haven’t even made it to the car
(as usual, your lunch lies abandoned
on the table, limp, unwanted)
and you have entered the imaginary
world that has followed you with penne pasta,
fingers, barrettes, sticks, even earrings
everywhere you go, creating characters
with each shell, telling stories with
frightened-fairy tale plots, holding
complex conversations from snippets
of adult talk that you have captured.
You are immune to the outside world,
to the goings on of swimming or interacting
with your sisters, and have given in to
the world where you imagine yourself to be.

Riona

Nothing can thrill you more than the simplest
pleasures (the tiniest pieces of the bigger picture
that we, emptying our wallets, want to offer you).
Here we stand in the intolerable heat
of a midsummer southern day, and I cannot
snap enough pictures of the grin that exudes
happiness in its purest, rawest form, lighting
up your entire face brighter than the glaring
sun that beats down its midday punishment.
In your hands is the infant rabbit, fur as soft
as the skin on your new cousin’s cheek, that
causes you to abandon interest in all other animals
(doves that coo, clucking chickens,
miniature goats begging for food, ponies
with lofty lips who placidly pick feed from puny palms).
The genuinely gentle creature you hold in your arms,
pulling its nose to your chin, clutching it as if
it is your own child, perfectly encompasses
all that it is (everything you are) that I love about you.