SUMMER anytime, anywhere: a poem

                                    Sage from Gordon's Mother's Day planter

SUMMER
(rediscovered in LUCIDITY POETRY JOURNAL, Summer, 2002)

Pack up the 'wagon, we're leaving this town

with our kids for two weeks at Nebo's campground.

A giant Impala packed close as sardines

with two youngish children and two more pre-teens,

six sleeping bags, cots, and a blue-striped tent

--its raising is always a stressful event.

"Let's find the swimming pool," begs older youth,

and, finding the bottom too fast, breaks a tooth.

Tennis preoccupies father and sons,

while daughters, with mother, bounce, swing, slide and run.

The day Dad turns forty, mortality looms;

he gazes toward sunset through coneflower blooms.

At night when the katydids kickstart their tune,

we see near the table bright eyes of a 'coon.

One night when it's raining, the tent starts to lean

we move cots to center away from the screen.

Bacon and coffee, charcoal and woodsmoke--

aromas spread over each camp like a cloak.

Hiking and reading, card games, volleyball,

away from computer, TV and the mall.

Two weeks every summer till children are grown

make memoried pictures to relive alone.

                                                  Summer sunset in Egg Harbor, WI,
                                                          photo by Gordon Paulus

c 2018, PL d/b/a lovepat press, Benton AR USA