Fourth of July 2015

One July fourth my dad drove crazily through a street in South Dakota.  That kid threw a firecracker at our car he cried, still a kid himself.  

One July fourth I saw two big girls in poodle skirts and petticoats rocking on the Ferris wheel.  They were scolded by a bony man below. 

 

One July fourth we landed in London and exulted at celebrating the great holiday there.  We took a nap, and the night passed by.

One July fourth I walked the silent thoroughfare, strolling past the quiet stores.  A little girl in Martha's Salon caught my eyes, pointing with small index fingers at her flowered headband.  I mouthed "pretty" to her smiling face.  A basketball hoop stood chained to face the street.  The homes straightened in their wildflower gardens, crowded with milkweed.  An old lady of the garden bore a shiny trinket.  She had been a sunflower the July before.  I picked among the shady streets.  I came home.

Firecrackers and bottle rockets entered the air.  I walked the younger dog in the alleys, his 106 pounds looking to me for protection.  Backyards revealed private lives, more milkweed, carefully preserved patches of field clover, and wild carrot.  A man and two boys played soccer in the unbusy street.  The older dog became conscious as I walked him, picking out his favorite spots ... the dog boulder, the fireplug, the neglected piles of leaves all the dogs visited.  He wouldn't eat.

I waved at the family watching dad set off fireworks in our street.  "Doin' good," mom said.  "Doin' good," the children echoed.  All around, bombs, booms, cracks, snaps, flashes.  The neighborhood lived.  Downtown, the fifth best display in the nation thundered and rattled, invisible in the pink debris of northern Saskatchewan wildfires.  

I sat on the boulevard in the dark.  Dad's fireworks went astray. One shot down the street, another spun on the pavement. I heard a clunk behind me.  The barbeques had been cooked, consumed, and cooled.  The air was soft without Saskatchewan smoke.  The dry yellow linden flowers shed their aroma without remark.