Nothing August Can Stay*

This is how my little pudding pop looked at me tonight-- with a what-what embedded in his long eyelashed sigh.

The sun was a big pink disk of kiss wedged in an otherwise sky, sinking.

Corn dog dinner, Corn Pop summer, pop goes the weasel round the mulberry bush, razzmatazz, razzmatazz, we all fall down the school shoot.

Lickety split the grooved metal tongue chips in, chips in the wood chop-chop, in the Insinkerator we don’t save for later, we‘re a thoroughly now know-how.

This is how the house that Jack built was made, one marshmallow peanut butter fluffer nutter sandwich lunch-wrapped in saran at a time.

Hickory, dickory, dock, my darling do oh do remember me under a summertime tree, strange fruit in a fallow field of fireflies, otherwise flitting.

My delicate daisy, lie fresh with me in green grass hazy-dazy, September but a twinkling away, a cardigan put away, a mingling of decay, nothing August can stay.

Weeks astray, what’ll we do when we’ve become our own hall monitor with clipboard and vest, ding dong the witch is dead, our only recess distress call and call and call and answer.


*published in Mo: Writings From The River, Montana State University, Great Falls, Spring 2008.