Barefoot Summers

by Marti Grimes

T-shirts plastered to our backs,

we’d play Flash Gordon and

mumbly-peg with jackknives,

careful not to cut ourselves,

while we waited for the milkman.

Pasting our eyes to the hill, ?we’d watch shimmering road

for his big, white truck,

loaded with glass quarts of Jersey milk,

cream so thick on top

you could spoon it on sliced strawberries

and hot fudge sundaes.]

We kids would gather

like deer to a salt lick.

Glenn would chip chunks of ice—

one for each of us.

We sucked on these

till our tongues went numb,

then cooled our salty foreheads

as we sprawled beneath the old box elder,

watching battalions of red and black beetles

march up and down its trunk.