I so often yearn for the brilliant freedom
children exude at the public pool--
in their Tahitian orange board shorts
swinging like mudflaps against youthful
legs covered in fine, blonde wisps,
girls in lemon sorbet one pieces
standing triumphantly akimbo
at the water's edge with small
protruding bellies for no other
reason than to be, beauties
much like wildflowers, lone columbines
or other pale fauna--

evenly evertan or milky white,
beet sunburns that creep down the sharp points
of shoulder blades, barely held in place by sheets of taut canvas
leaking water and blinking rapidly
beneath oily fingers smeared with sunscreen and diluted
peach creamsicle--fresh glass blades pressed and dried to
little feet as if they were pages out of a wriggling book--

slapping wetly against pavement so hot you could
swear the children sizzle , leaping over bathers--teenage
girls that flinch and scoff--as if they can fly and we are ants,
them, giants who we cannot touch. Whose droplets barely
graze us, whose enveloping warm wind we ignore or
reproach.

If we grow dim and colder as we age then these are still boiling, still
utterly reactive to any and every substance
every limb a curious proboscis, mercurial temperaments and
tiny hearts that flash like switchboards and wallop against
caverns heavy with discovery.