Summer Dreams

ribbons of eighty-five unfurl under my tires, scrolling through South Carolina,

back through my roots, climbing the thick, wooden trunk: sturdy, girth-invested, all the way up into my branches, finally leaving.

So what if I don’t remember swimming out to a boat, climbing aboard, and taking off for a private cove?

Or a night blurring down Broad Street in someone else’s limousine, cocaine and champagne making the night bright and bubbly?

I’ll climb the fountain after the concert, drink beer at Lucy’s grave, lay down on the fairway under the sprinklers, ask the Godfather of Soul for a favor (for a friend), get my groove on barefoot on the dance floor of your bar (pull shards of Budweiser bottles from the soles of my feet decades later), wear my sunglasses home, and drive to the beach on half a tank of gas.