Are You Going To Spend The Whole Summer This Way

are you going to spend the whole summer this way?
perhaps they asked me but I was thinking about Titania's
misspent midsummer wondering how it would feel

to be caught up in a dream that was not even one quarter real.
but fifty cents buys the paperbacks that come in the mail,
the summer mysteries, the ones you read in the shade

drinking up all the shasta colas-

the books from the school catalog doubly blessed
now that there's no homework. strawberry or vanilla
a voice said, strawberry I said thinking of what

Titania must have worn in the glimmering
in the gloaming stepping out ill met
and with her jeweled retinue.

and I wonder if I'll read all of Shakespeare
finally this year before the maples blush roseate
like I said I always would, one summer...

one stardusted summer's long ago is not enough
to tell you exactly what I mean.
well, we ate new peaches in the backyard

and felt like royalty
when fireflies littered the dark with silver
and dreamed that Time was ours

and the hours of all the flowers.

mary angela douglas 15 june 2015