Sometimes, I miss the vivid joy of childhood in summer. In one of those fits of nostalgia, I wrote this poem – it was also mid-winter and I was feeling particularly heat-starved!

In Our Youth

High noon. High Summer.

Cicadas croon in pillows of feverish heat

As the day burns in bright dust

And heady, lemon breezes.

We race to the Reservoir,

To the promise of salvation,

To heal our bubbling idle,

To remember ourselves.

What was hostile in Winter

Now invites us with comforting whispers.

The waters, unchanged,

Transform in our eager immersion.

Plunge in, break the stillness.

We wrap ourselves in velvety relief.

Bubbles tickle our backs, necks, faces.

We rest in the hushed deeps.

Slowly looking up, glowing ribbons brush our skin;

The Sun sings out to her errant wards,

As our guardians will all too soon call us home

From our adventures, our imaginations.

We will rise, in time,

To rejoin the turning of the earth;

But now, we stretch our breath in milliseconds,

Revelling in the elated anticipation of rebirth. 

~ Caitlin O’Malley

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