Summer evenings on the terrace
as the risen dark
flowed in, phosphorescence
of fireflies, and heat
lightning startling
the horizon.
Blue shadows eddied,
thickened, hid
the creek that wandered
like the grown–ups'
conversation, pooling
around tumbled rocks,
pouring on —
talk of war, nuclear
disarmament, protests
in the far –off city.
Starlight melted
through the leaves,
smearing lips and arms
with silver,
and the children
sprawled in the fading grass, or ran
down steep fields, chasing
the bright moon of a baseball
into the dark.
Hardly anyone is left
from those days—
so many leapt,
or fallen, into this tide
washing at our feet —
indigo streaked
with distant gold,
and shadows shifting —
the tall shapes
of the thunder gods
tramping through the dark —
About the Author: Wendy McVicker lives and writes in the beautiful green hills of Athens, Ohio. In her poetry, she seeks "to honor memory and the slow, deep process of knowing." Her poems have appeared in Appalachian Women's Journal, Confluence, Riverwind, and Whiskey Island, among others. She is a teaching poet with the Ohio Arts Council's Arts in Education program, and has been inciting poetry in schools, libraries, galleries, and community centers since 1987.
Copyright © 2008 by Wendy McVicker. This poem may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.