Summer Sestina

Dogs bark,

calling out the first day of summer,

and children dive into calm waters,

while mothers watch

on their patch of sand,

thinking of walks in the rain.

Clouds and thunder that threaten rain

prepare to bark

with sermons to send summers’

passion into the sand

in a deluge of water

that runs like a watch.

I watch,

unobserved, behind the bark

of a willow tree, protected from rain,

but not recollections that flow like water

with the persistence of wet sand—

Hauntings of past summers. 

A breeze scented with summer 

grass and pink peonies rains,

staining the grains of sand

the color of bark

as time dissolves like a Dali watch.

My eyes fill with water.

Memories, like a glass slipper, sanded

smooth as azure water

on a hot summer

day, with no barking

breeze, divide the rain

into tears that leak like the seconds on a watch.

My Minnie Mouse watch,

wrapped around a wrist textured like sand,

continues to bark

out time in spite of rain

and years passing, swift as water,

distancing me from this summer.

The first day of summer, a dancing diva, 

barks, filling my head with lethal memories as heavy as sand.

I set them free, as if they were glad birds flying.

They cascade down my cheeks like raindrops.