by Ellen Romano

Thirteen

Late June as evening comes on
the boys in the park slow down,
ride their bikes in circles
around the girls weaving
crowns of clover near the pavilion.

They’re shy with each other,
then one girl, usually so quiet,
sings about holding hands, and beating
hearts and running away.
A boy brushes a strand of hair
from her cheek, damp with sweat
and smelling of green apple shampoo.
A lightning bug flashes behind him,
her breath catches.

She’s late.
The streetlights have been on for a while now,
and there’s trouble when she gets home.
In her room she opens the window
to the humid night, the deepening darkness,
the urgent chorus of crickets.

***

Cumulus
          After the Painting by John Tullis

This painting is almost nothing but sky,
the sky almost nothing but clouds, stratocumulus
dividing the sky into patches of color,
indigo and azure. I haven’t been one
to study clouds, try to predict the weather
from their color and shape, see pictures
of other things there. I have been a look-
down kind of person, from my childhood
when I loved worms and insects, everything
bound to the earth as I wanted to be in the days
when my leg braces first came off and I walked
in corrective shoes, conscious of every step.

But one full moon night, sleepless, I found
my husband’s old binoculars in a closet
and looked up into the illuminated sky
where clouds, and the moon, and the dimly
lit treetops were somehow closer
than the dark patch of ground I stood on.

Looking up can be disorienting. I am
less sure of my balance now, more like
the child I once was, newly liberated
and eager to take everything in.
I stand on this gallery floor gazing at clouds
stacked high, and I am climbing, climbing
from green grass up and up to a place beyond
the boundaries of the canvas, beyond
the boundaries of this room, this city, this world.

Photo by Aron Visuals via Pexels