The private club
In idle summers of youth,
my sister and I found adventure
at the private club. Mom and dad
vanished into adult land – tennis –
and we came up against
pies and elixirs; then, fueled,
sandbox to jungle gym, where
I was general and she soldier,
and we studied the outlines of
our limbs and were indifferent.
By the club house then, flushed and
posed to encounter real life, I
taught her to disrupt those calm
yellowish hills, peel back the
skin and see swarming, wormish
life, structure organic and strange,
flinging small bodies into the air,
faster and faster until a cry comes and
one squirms in her eye, colored red for
danger. We run to the washroom
and I perform an operation, talking,
talking so she doesn’t see I’m scared.
Then a shout from the courts and
time unstretches. Now duty
calls us to the shoe brushes, where
we jump for popsicles and water, and
airy freedom falls from our feet
like grains of sand.