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Permanent Press
When I think of that summer, it opens like a pleat in cloth: lake, tree, out- blooming itself. What deep delicious yardage of suffering: the virginal July we defended, all the while itching willful and goatish. Five hundred larks rising from the fields and all I could do was stare at the scar on your arm- the gold embroidery I longed to touch. What difference that time and pharmacology delivered too late? I loved you then in the old way of longing. Four wars, nine recessions, ten presidents: patches. Each year another July flings her ribboned hat into the ring, another summer trying to duplicate ours. Who were we on that park bench that defies being folded and put away? Forget it. Are you still alive? The rest is gibberish.