Summer Bomb
Poetry
When the days begin to list toward the borderless —
as though an anarchist’s exhortation to fearless
featurelessness was summer’s bomb
threat exacted — there is no other general
practitioner’s prescription to follow: do not
worry about too much white rice, bread; ice
cream, hot dogs suffocated in homemade
nacho cheese; bloat, running to fat. Yesterday
is today, and tomorrow is history, so never
mind the lawlessness of a water-weighted body
that walks all it wants (less so than it needs) hours
at a time, to nowhere, nothing, against the sun-
stung backdrop of ponds, fairways, invisible holes
and removed flags. The only way to keep clean, light,
is to wait until tonight, celebrate the crescendos of Pop!
and Crack! as though you were a thunder- and fireworks-
terrorized dog, and melt away as you pant and shake.
