Saturday
end of summer
Labor Day weekend
and the unusual
young man we met this summer
Radical Ru researching
Irish and Black laborers who built
the Thomas Cole House
first Native American fair
right here today
and we will go
to Stone Ledge Farms
for shisito peppers
red carrots many leeks
tonight we’ll make ribs
and sit outside
and pretend this
will last forever.
I like this. That feeling of trying to hold on to summer you mentioned really brought me back to so many Labor Day weekends from childhood with my sister, Diane. I can remember a particular Labor Day.
We knew that for us school would begin on the following morning, I felt that as long as we stayed outside, the summer wouldn’t be over. The adults were upstairs watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon. We were out on the patio bouncing a Spaulding back and forth hoping that Steve Lawrence and Edie Gourmet would keep their minds off of us. We knew we’d be called on any minute to take our first day of school baths. We stayed out in the slightly cool breeze. Soon, as we expected, Mom opened the window over our heads and called us in to get ready for the new school year. I silently said goodbye to my summer friends, who were in their family cars, probably in holiday traffic on their ways to their winter places in The City. As I walked through the screen door. I kissed another summer goodbye
Wonderful poem...leaves me longing