Swarms Seen In Summer Some Time Ago Poem by Susan Lacovara

I

Joseph loved the Monarchs
Marching in their patterned parade dress
Gold and flecks of brown with black
In those late days of summer's surrender
We twisted together in teenage adventure
Taking on tasks to tan our skin
And perhaps put some jingle in our cutoffs
Bronze and baking beneath that Southampton sky
We were far from rich in coin
But ever wealthy in our laughing
At what the wealthy hired us to do
Those stuffed silk shirts needed never to water gardens
And unlike us could not ever imagine
Pulling dandelions from the gravelly circular drive
That only their drivers knew the shortcut to
A house too big, to be so empty
And sit so close to the ocean's elegance
Just a backdrop in the barely breathable humidity
In the long legged beachgrass rushes
Posture lined up like the New York City Rockettes
Began the earthy folly of the Butterfly Ballet
Sun filtered symphonic surrealism
Played out before us
In majesty of a multiplication table magnitude
Swarms of summer escape, too many to count
The fallout of flapping paperthin wings
Creating a breeze only we were caught in
There, two...unnoticed in their seaside town
Making merry as we made minimum wage
True the benefit package kept us coming back
Long after out tans had turned pale

II

Scott walked his stiff way, each afternoon
Mad and mumbling, at five
Prompt as the workday ended, ever the same stains
Alongside the stretch of the railroad ties
With giant strides to speed his thirst towards quench
At the crosslight corner blue collar bar
Head down deliberate to quicken his gait
Never noticing the goldenrod standing at attention
His cynical eyes fixed only upon his size thirteen shoes
Dare he to smile at the world whistling by
The very sound of carefree clamour brought on allergic rash
I drove the length of his lumbering
Once on a day when he did not offer to wait
Although headed down that very same path
I found myself alone and mauled by a buzzing static
A sound so foreign I needed to investigate
Like Dorothy spying black funnel clouds
A swarming of opalesque iridescent wonder
A waterfall whisp of prismatic precision
Filling the field and fading the tracks from sight
Dragonflies migrating with military might
Took to their Kamikaze flights
Dizzying me from my determined direction to follow the man
Who saw nothing of beauty bewitching
And I, alone, was granted admission to the grand performance
Of fairies parachuting from the sky