Midsummer - when the children
fold the fields with their
flowers and their warmer love.
Waiting, waiting for a girl to call.

Summer - I saw as the briefcase mobs beat
the sidewalk clay until it dries. Still drying
out from the sake last Friday; like hanging fish, limp like mother’s washing,
Calling, calling their lover on sizzling metal lines in the cloudless, blue sky.

My life - short skirts with petunias lined up with a girlish fever,
Never caring for leather and suits blasting out on the TV shop,
Peridots on my mind, sweet roses and candied sesame.
Sizzling, sizzling like weathered, withering Western waters.

-

Childhood - I saw it flash a million lifetimes
ago - every hour a red sun’s kissing blur -
while father’s out on the open waters, dwindling, diving nose-first - a warrior.
Weathered, weathered like the bottoms of ships beating the blinking seas.

Atomic - my life as it whistled before me -
All went silent before his deafening blast,
Kites singed by a little boy’s blunt force - he
Left me blinking, blinking for my cracked heart to fill out like gold kintsugi.