draft

[in_d_cisive]

Turning Twenty

Memorial Day weekends into
solid gold that will not follow
us to heaven, nor cling to us
much the way bare feet grab Earth:
in steps.

Seven-year-old baton-twirlers
march in time and pink scrunchies
and pink shirts, and white shorts
around scrawny legs. Why should a dancer
turn away at the end of a parade
which moves from its start around to
start to look for her mother?

Let's barbecue the day that makes
white shorts okay again. Permissible
to subdivide warmth and cold, permission to grow
new leaves already in bud

The morning of a twentieth year
draws blood like a horsefly
from the ponies the baton-twirler dreamt.

One lawn, our lawn contains
a ripe plot of grass with a million tiny blades
and a tiny flag skewered into a corner,
reminding us where we pasture
and barbecue.

Parents belong here. Their children belong.
Their twenty-year-olds consider
the options of past and future lawns
in the veins of a single plucked blade,
newly deprived of the option to turn
in the wind, turn as it will
turn to a flower

though it is nice to be