Second Spring 

I don’t know if it’s climate change or the random cycling of seasonal differences, but this year the conditions (rain, sun, barometer) were just right for everything on my path around the lake (cement path, domesticated lake) to rebound into second spring as if it were April. First I noticed the honeysuckle blossoms and I stopped to inhale their perfume. Then I saw the little white mayflowers tucked in between drying brown fringes of festuca gone to seed. We are well into the end of the summer, practically the start of fall, for heaven’s sake. The blackberries are finished and pumpkin picking has nearly begun. Soon I will start tasting the smoke of leaf fires (backyard firepits, landscaping services) against the insides of my cheeks.

Then there were strawberries, honest to god strawberries! I bent down (slowly, hand on back, knees complaining) and picked one to eat. I thought of my first love (my first real love) and the time we shared berries and whipped cream in his mother’s kitchen and whispered our love (his sister was listening, his brother was not). What would we say to each other if I could magically (and painlessly) make my spouse (salty food taster, rental car driver, fitted sheet folder) disappear? And my first love’s spouse (facebook image, linkedin profile), of course. Would we talk about what we’d had and how we’d lost hold of it? Would our love uncurl tender leaves and blossom again, new and sweet?

Or would we smile and touch hands once, gently, because metaphors are only word games, after all. That honeysuckle blooming so large and heavy, had no scent. That vagrant berry burst flavorless and placid against my tongue. My first love (my first real love) has no children to show me pictures of, and has not shared as many tears or tv reruns with me as my spouse (my actual spouse, lifelong lover, joint objective setter) and I have shared in just one year.

The Summer Stream

There is a curve in the stream near my house,

I mean the house I grew up in, rather,

and perhaps not a stream hidden deep in the woods,

but a drainage ditch in the back yard, actually.

Danielle and I played there with our dolls, those

troll dolls with wild hair and wild eyes and grins.

Hers had the blue hair, mine had the orange.

Or maybe hers orange and mine pink. Whatever.

No one cared if we slipped in the mud.

Sneakers from Two Guys were cheap. And washable.

We didn’t worry what our moms would say.

At least not on warm days in summer. Probably.

At the edge of the stream, at the curve where we played

grow blue flags and jewelweed the color of trolls’ hair,

and wild mint and sage and wooly thyme and moss,

and memories more solid than facts.