The dragons fly above the lake at midnight,
their giant wings outstretched,
silent
as they scan the waters below and
seen
only in the shadow of their
crossing,
that cold chill causing us to
shiver,
unable to sleep and stepping
outside
into the darkness of a summer’s
night,
seeking solace in ourselves;
and in the morning, the sky burns
orange and rose, red and yellow, a
fire
left by the dragons in their
leaving,
silent and unseen.
Saturdays were grocery days growing up,
the old A&P near town, like so
many things,
no longer there, no longer an
A&P in business anywhere
but two of us kids always went with
mom, the middle two,
anticipating a candy bar as
payment, a reward for going
with her, 25 cents for a couple
hours of work, pulling
food from the shelves and loading
up the cart,
loading up the car, and homeward
bound, a candy bar,
carefully chosen from the candy
racks, a Snickers bar
or Peanut Butter Cup, Hersey’s
chocolate, plain
or with almonds, or a small bag of
M&Ms, a candy treat
for us who helped, easily bribed
with chocolate, 50 cents
for the two of us, a bargain for my
parents, up and down
the aisles and filling the cart to
overflowing, a week’s
groceries for our large family,
five kids and our parents.
Time passes, as time does, and with
it change, growing up,
moving away, too busy schedules,
less eager to help, a candy bar
no longer reason enough to go, a
bribe less effective when you turn
10, or 11, or whatever age it was,
and I can’t remember now
when that all stopped, too long ago
for a failing memory to remember.
But the Snickers and Peanut Butter
Cups and M&M’s, Hersey’s
chocolate, plain and with almonds,
still line the candy racks
at the checkout counter at Shaws
and Hannafords and whatever
else replaced the A&P, the ones
I shop at myself, my grocery
list in hand, deciphering my own
handwriting scribbled up and down
the page, trying to make sense of
the letters scrawled there, up and down
the aisles and filling my cart half
full, just the essentials for my little
clan of 4, and time alone, just me,
no little helpers for chocolate rewards.
I often wonder how my mother did
it, the two of us in tow, “helping,”
getting the sweetest, most sugary
breakfast cereal, whining when the answer
was “no,” climbing the shelves to
get to the cans on the top, balancing
half a dozen cans or boxes and
dumping them crashing into the cart, lucky
to have missed the jar of pickles
placed there carefully before. Now, I pack
the cart like I’m packing for a
vacation, lining things up, nothing crushed,
no wasted space, constantly moving
things around to make more fit in,
not that I need the room, just my
own compulsion to pack, to be neat
about it. At the checkout counter,
there’s a wait, always a wait, too few
checkers, a coffee cloche of
neighbors shopping or that favored cashier,
catching up, and the kid in me
scans the candy racks, the old favorites
among the new brands and flavors,
the NutRagious, the Wonka Bars, Nerds,
and gummy things, Skittles, Twix,
and Kit Kat, M&Ms now with chocolate
and pretzels, milk chocolate or
dark chocolate, mint chocolate, too many choices,
so I reach for the Snickers, 3
Musketeers, Nestle’s Crunch or Mr. Goodbar,
and settle on the Peanut Butter
Cup, the bargain of two candy bars in one
package, my reward for a job well
done, grocery shopping for the family,
midweek, and today, all those years
later, I no longer work for 25 cents,
but a big pay raise, $1.50, or
more, a big reward for my help, though
far less of a bargain these days, time
passing, prices going up and up,
this price we pay for growing
older, I guess, growing up,
the price we pay for adulthood.
We’ve made it through another
winter
into the start of spring’s renewal
again, the earth
warming and the snow and the cold
receding,
and we are readying ourselves for
summer.
We are taking one day at a time,
pacing ourselves,
taking it slow, putting the garden
back together
and opening up the summer home,
spring cleaning.
And so, to celebrate today, in
anticipation
of a new season, I’d like an ice
cream cone,
that proverbial summer treat, something
simple,
like chocolate or, maybe, more
exotic, daring, strawberry,
cold on my tongue, licking around
and around the ice
cream before it melts, savoring it,
catching a stray drip
slowly sliding down a waffle cone, my
preference,
an edible dish, no spoon required.
It’s nothing fancy, no
hot fudge sundae or banana split,
just something simple
to carry with me easily down to the
water’s edge, the ice
breaking up and shrinking,
returning to the lake, down
to the water’s edge to watch the
Mergansers, Mr. and Mrs.,
newly arrived, and the loons, a homecoming, diving
below the surface, silent, to feed
on the fish, more active
now, like us, freed from under
the thick ice melting above;
a slow treat, this ice cream cone, an
excuse to linger,
to celebrate the season ahead, the
warmth
of the summer sun and a fire in the pit at sunset burning.
And the Scots
and the Gauls
and the Celtic tribes
of Ireland prevailed,
moving forward, onward,
as we all must
in the troubling times ahead.
