O Won't You Remember The Popsicle Days

o won't you remember the popsicle days
the orange and cherry summer nights
lemon, the lime beaded afternoons

and the purple, the purple of the grape ice
defying all definitions of chilled through loveliness.
and then the triple decker in the cartoons of

Tubby and Lulu chocolate vanilla strawerry
stirring tri coloured flag of childhood; beloved brain freeze
of the sidewalk jumping

leapfrogging over the cracks not to
break our mother's backs so the rhyme flows and flows
around our treasury of days well spent.

oh for the same golden coins later on
the chocolate ones wrapped and caged in a golden net
and priced so reasonably really, ten cents.

or fresh paperbacks come in the mail today today
brown paper crisp and neat string wrapped
and we will learn everything beautiful

and float and kick in the aqua pool
with the best of them
and then it will be fall red and golden over all

and we'll still be happy singing along
swinging along on the sidewalks
until snows and Christmas

catch up with us the holly laden
lad and maiden when
our shadows for a while will

stop growing and our mothers
stop letting out the hems.

mary angela douglas 6 april 2016