Going Barefoot

Summer's cherry blossoms
pink on virginal white,
an electric sweetness in the air;
whirling storms echoing
through open windows,
lilacs cloying perfume
and warm rains puddling
in our midnight dreams.

Awakening on green fields
summer brings an end of shoes,
casket-like plodders weighing
down the delicate sky kites,
fluttering, frenetic flyers
longing to soar beyond
the southern cross of Centaurus,
across a Rubicon of time.

Bare summer feet, nearer to God
than any winter confession,
embrace on a tangled green mat,
innocent as a first garden party,
clumsy adolescent lips yearning
juicily for eight o'clock kisses,
rewarded only by love's longing.

Embroidered grey sailors
crisscross latticed porches
bordered by bridal wreath,
perfect miniature bouquets tightly
formed to resist advances of bare
pink soldiers on a drill; but
touching shyly in skirmishes
of shadowed sunsets, retreating
usually unfulfilled into a
twilight of stars.

Close your eyes rest; feel again
the joy of those summers when
childhood dreams were carried on
the backs of unicorns who couldn’t
stay for morning’s light; nor hear
the streaming sudden storms, or
feel the electric sweetness in
the air—-and midnight dreams of
first kisses and an end of shoes.