The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Robert Fillman Summer Ending after Edward HopperUnder a dull orb of porch light, they stand motionless. The moon rises like a skull, and they’re desperate for sound, a twig snap or small leaf rustling, anything. He thought he’d won her, balanced his job all summer, fishing on the lake, kept her simmering like a boiling pan. She leans on the wall, her pink halter top concealing little, her legs, long and smooth like the white clapboard. In his dark blue shirt-sleeves, hand on his heart, he wouldn’t dare drape the other across her bare upper arm, at least not tonight. But he would love to slip fingers through her hair. He imagined the way he’d trail them, as if a slack hand rippling the water's shimmery surface. She’d take off her top and skirt, beckon him into the night air. He’d undress, follow. But their eyes never meet. She’s lost, turning away, seeming to look beyond the soles of her tennis shoes, into the future, into the dry grain of her stiffened heart. The closed door, a small gap in the curtains, people in the house probably sleeping, inches between them, summer is ending on her parents’ porch. But they are silent, unable to move, afraid to take even a single breath. Hunting Season Day after Thanksgiving, our stomachs not yet settled from all the turkey and ham, we’d get our coloring books. Dad would be packing his gear, an old sleeping bag, blankets, and beer, his blaze orange hunting jacket, Mom slicing onion and turkey for sandwiches in the kitchen. We’d listen to her crinkle wax paper before filling his Thermos with coffee for the long drive. My brothers and I would just sit on the couch, blue light of the TV flashing raw resentment. That’s when Dad would tiptoe into the parlor, kiss our foreheads and disappear. What he said (if anything) we didn’t hear, our bodies barely shifting, like logs in a fire that had already gone cold. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |