Coming over the speaker
and this former squeaker
is your pool toy
not coy
The lines under the lines
direct these drudging spines
to swim next to the little rim
and you are not grim
Your joy in this sun
under your hat's bun
is a hot dog of a joy
toy or no
And please play
those top forties today
until the mind demands
a hand streaked with chocolate bar
That's the memory:
diving board glory
on a concrete deck
run neck by neck
Where a few good suburbs
made their curbs known
and Miltonian equilibrium
become available to devils and their opprobrium
Sometimes a children's poem loses its head
when my head inflates like bread
yeasted too hard
for the style of card
That was asked and answered for
in this far from pool store
of knowledge and hedges
and even the rhythm will be lost
In the fracas of familiarity
whose precarity nostalgia
is only a depression away
from this early summer day
Roman Ryan 