another poem

IT’S TIME TO GO IN

The summer sun was bright

sweet as licked candy those hot days

Cooling our bodies in the green waters

We closed our eyes. We believed

even the sunlight loved us. All our games

were dotted over with stars. We shone

in each other’s light & turned & turned

our hurts minor & kissed away.

It has been dark now for some time

shadows taking our hands. One

by one our friends are not here

I can’t see who it is, there, far

in that cold shade, the golden leaves

fallen all around, such tired children,

who in that darkness calls us in.

(too tired now to figure out where I first published this; I think Prairie Schooner in the last few years. will correct later if I am wrong; on deadline, but felt like flinging a poem to the winds)(well, my sense of who published this is correct, but the timing is off: this one is in the Fall 2006 Prairie Schooner. I think my sense of "a few years ago" has to do with the time between acceptance and printing; though in the case of this poem, there is a longer journey: Yankee accepted it just before their poetry editor was informed that no longer would they have a poetry page; thus it came home, and went out again, and again, and again...till resting in the friendly pages of PS)