We spent those stifling endless summer afternoons
on hot front porches, cutting paper dolls from Sears
catalogs, making up our own ideal families
complete with large appliances
and an all-occasion wardrobe with fold-down
paper tabs.
Sometimes we left crayons on the cement
landing, just to watch them melt.
We followed the shade around the house.
Time was a jarful of pennies, too hot
to spend, stretching long and sticky,
a brick of Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy.
Tomorrow’d be more of the same,
ending with softball or kickball,
then hide and seek in the mosquitoey dark.
Fireflies, like connect-the-dots or find-the-hidden-
words, rose and glowed, winked on and off,
their cool fires coded signals
of longing and love
that we would one day
learn to speak.
Published in Radiance (Word Press, 2005).
Childhood Memories Of Summer
This one brought me back, way back. I lived that kind of life, and I look back on it fondly. Time seemed to move so slowly back then. We were rushing to grow up. Little did any of us know...
The Fifties
©
Barbara Crooker
more by Barbara Crooker
Published by Family Friend Poems July 2020 with permission of the Author.
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ABOUT THE POET:
Monet famously said that gardening and painting were the only things he knew how to do; change that to gardening and writing, and that describes Barbara Crooker. Barbara Crooker is a poetry editor for Italian-Americana, and author of twelve chapbooks and nine full-length books of poetry. Some Glad Morning, Pitt Poetry Series,...
Spring Poems
Memorial Day Poems
Children Poems
Father's Day Poems
Wedding Poems
Mother Child Poems