Summer, Forty Years Later Poem by Russell Edson

He struggles out of a closet where his mother had hung him forty years ago.
She didn't understand children; she probably thought he was something made of cloth.
He thinks he as waited long enough for her to understand children, even though he is no longer a child.
After forty years a man has a right to seek the hallway; after all, he might even hope for the front door- and who knows, perhaps even a Nobel Prize for patience!

From the front porch he sees that the midday sky is darker than he remembered it; the green of the lawn and trees has also darkened: too many nights, too many coats of varnish. . . .
This is not the same summer, the color is gone. . .

. . . That little boy who is always passing the house with his wagon has turned into a little old man collecting garbage. . .