Summer 1969

June
I crashed my Matchbox Ferraris
on home-made gravel roads
Saturday nights
the thunder of stock car engines
traveled miles across cornfields
the Doppler effect
making their revolutions rise and fall
like the din of a faraway battle
the thunder lasted a thousand summers
but maybe it was five or six.

July
My parents' guests laughed and drank
on the patio under the shadows of an 80-year old
oak tree spared by the contractor
leaving it encircled like a druid meeting place
for the first time humans cast their shadows on the moon
I ran from our black and white TV
to the patio with urgent dispatches
The Eagle has landed
Stepping off the LEM now…
not one Christopher Columbus among the guests
to come watch TV with me.

August
Morning was the hum of a Briggs and Stratton lawn mower
marching up and down the yard
spinning silver steel against green grass
but in the afternoon
sprawled on the lawn
it was the transient drone
of an unseen plane
following a care-free flight plan
threshing its blade through the hot blue sky
and after it's gone
I can still inhale the smell of cut grass.