Summer

If we could tell
the stories in our heads
the words that clack
in our typewriter bones
it wouldn't be like this

if we were old actors,
weathered and blessed by time
the cameras capped,
slack not rolling, missing it:

flicking our lines,
to flutter in the dirt like
cigarettes or rain;
the crew: smoking, unblinking.
all the birds of the forest:
they lay on their boughs,
listen like the dead

we'd tell them the story
of the coat closet
checked in scarves,
warm and Narnian,
soaked in pine and spice

of fast new legs
in the summer; the world
waiting behind its mask
malevolent
hidden in linen

of board games printed pale
from the sixties
played under two cross
badminton rackets
loved through the seventies

born under a good star but it's all for show
and no one really leaves --
the eighties dawned slow
treason and oil in the dark
zen and indifference in the day