A night in mid-August
and you can hear them
from your house,
the drums begin
and brass sounds follow
like quietly excited children,
like the two who walk with you
over the hill.
The sun sinks
into evening’s quicksand,
your soggy clock
of adolescence
ticks faster than ever.
Scent of popcorn
excites your nostrils,
grey couples talk soft, slow,
and once your blanket
is draped upon the grass
you see an orb of hollow green
drift sleepily
up, up, over everyone’s heads
and you wish
you were that tiny balloon,
floating far away
toward something new
as each teenage summer
blurs into your brew.
Written: May 2013 and April 2014.
Explanation: Apologies to those of you who do not like Plath, but for my final year dissertation at university I will be writing poems about her (and also her husband Ted Hughes), and topics the two of them looked at. On Friday 15th August 1952, Plath and two children she looked after that summer went to a band concert in Chatham, Massachusetts. The scene is described in her collected journals. A work in progress - feedback greatly appreciated for not only this, but all future poems dealing with Plath and Hughes.