Summer Day 1962 Poem by Terry Collett

We sit and stare
at the pond.

Summer day;
warm and
almost airless.

She has a white blouse
and blue skirt, sandals,
her toes visible.

I'll be glad
when school's over,
she says,
get a job
and earn some money.

Can't wait,
I think I can get a job
at the garage down
by the crossroads,
I say.

No more ugly
green uniform
and white socks;
can wear clothes
I like, not what
my mother chooses,
Yehudit says.

She turns to me
and her eyes
search mine.

Remember our
first kiss?

Yes, took
my breath away,
I say.

Wasn't here though,
was on that
Christmas carol
singing night,
under moon
and stars,
she says.

We did things
here though,
I say,
looking at her eyes,
how sunlight
brightens them.

And there was that
guy over there fishing
and we didn't see him
until later,
she says.

Maybe he never saw us.

Maybe he did.

He never told no one,
least not that
my mother
ever found out,
she says,
looking back
at the pond,
where ducks swim
and a swan floats by
over the other side.

Just as well
or I'd have been for it,
Yehudit says.

I kiss her cheek.

She looks at me,
her eyes burning blue.

That's how things start.

Guess so.

She kisses me
and we kiss more.

We lay back
on the grass
embracing and kissing.

A blackbird sings,
a woodpecker pecks
on a tree in the wood
near by.

I see a new world
in the beauty
of her eyes,
in the touch
of her skin.

I can can enter
that new world
if she'll let me in.