J

June

Summers Then

Hamburgers were a nickel
Wither everything on ‘em.
At the Greek’s, when you spent a quarter
You got a sixth one free.
That was on the Park Square.
The park was split by State Street
And was way down near the end of it.
One side had a Civil War canon
Flanked by pyramids of cannon balls
And a moldy-green statue
Of someone on horseback.
The other side held a huge squat drum-shaped fountain
It had colored lights and changing sprays
After dark on summer nights.
Families sat with little to say but Oh! And Look there!
Or made promenade in the clear summer dark,
Slowly, so toddlers could keep up.
Older kids pranced ahead
But not too far ahead
Least they should miss a stop
At one of the sparkling shops around the square.
The ice cream shoppe, across from the Greek’s,
Smelled richly of butterfat and vanilla
And made cones with pointed scoop
That piled the ice cream up like a bishop’s miter.
Those were a nickel, too
And so rich that the cream left the spoon greasy
If you used one.
As a small  child
I planned to use the first dollar I ever earned
To buy twenty of those ice cream cones.

By the time I was twenty, I had forgotten my ambition
And the Ecoma Dairy had forgotten how to make ice cream
Now it is composed of artificial everything
Non-caloric sweeteners, and polysorbate sixty
So it’s just as well.
But I do remember summers THEN . . .

Tags: J, June, poetry

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Poetry Dept.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.