This morning the sun didn’t bother sending
fingers of pink and red into the waking sky- clouds
buried that thought in shades of gray, undersides of
silver and smoke, and in the west black heralded
the coming rain, first in mist, then working it’s way
through the multi-nozzle names from cone, to spray, to full, even
to the not-named waterfall, a river running down the middle
of the street, culverts flowing – I think of newspaper
boats made when I was ten and floated under the dirt road
to the other side by way of a drainage pipe, how my cousins
and I got drenched as we recaptured the boats and sent them
riding the water again and again beneath the overhead colored
gunmetal, colored dull, colored what a great way to spend an
afternoon in another long summer of childhood before neither
sun nor rain mattered enough to keep us from the daily trudge
to wherever one goes when becoming an adult, being responsible,
joining the hordes who have forgotten that play is its own very
important work, even when you’re grown.
TAMMY VITALE
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1 Comment
I never knew how to make paper boats. 🙁 We used leaves and small branches, but would run alongside the sudden stream as they made their way into the field and raced along the sand dunes. We had to move fast and wet, too, because the water sunk into the sand as soon as the rain stopped. What a lovely memory!! 🙂