august, someday

I vividly remember the last few weeks of summer as an early teen when anxiety and dread about the upcoming school year snuck into every still moment. When you were in it, school meant friends, projects, and sports, but in late July, school only reminds you of rules and socially awkward situations.

I used to lay in the field behind our house and play whack-a-mole with intrusive thoughts, trying to be mindful of the summertime sights and sounds instead. Teenage me didn't consider it 'meditation' -- or even know what medtation was -- but here's a bit of that self-talk, in sonnet form:

Lay back in clover to freeze-frame the time;

swap blushing spells for stems between fingers,

look past the sky to ignore the bell chime,

and plead with July -- beg! -- that it lingers.

With unfocused gaze and heels in wet grass,

no shoes, no skirt, no nervous energy,

just hear the leaves tick, and watch the birds pass

while they wing and sing Summer’s elegy.

If gossip and rules appear on the trees,

all sticky and ripe on branches that bend,

focus on sunshine -- it’s focus that frees --

all its ambient heat and how it lends

a feeling of now, with future outweighed,

and August will wilt back into “someday.”