Waiting For The Fair Poem by Jenny Kalahar

June yawns and lolls its panting, month-long tongue
along the lakeside park for me
Open school doors flap and slam in the dusty summer wind
as if every organized system in the world
has been disbanded
even though my father still grumbles his complaints
as he rides a hot, crowded bus to work
and even though we still sit, uncomfortable and stiff, in church
where I listen for consonance in the sermon
and kick my bored Sunday shoes against the pew ahead

June should be one of the greatest kid months ever invented:
Warm rain congregating into brown puddles
Kites in animal shapes with trailing tails
flying overhead into the searing, wavering sun
Grass comfortably soft under my lounging stomach
or gripped between my teeth while I think my summer thoughts
June should be free-breathing and bike-riding
filled with green maple seeds helicoptering down
But I've come to hate that month, that June
That awful month of June

A few blocks from my plain old house
where my plain old family lives
the county fairgrounds... are
They host lesser events to tide us over
until the real thing comes again
A fancy cat show was there last month
all rescued cats, I guess
A few of them were walked right down my own sidewalk
on real dog-type leashes - like a dog!
All trained and everything!
Some had silky white fur fluffed out to here
while other cats were long and slanky slink
They made me think of tigers, but like that show on my fairgrounds
they weren't the real thing
There was a dance for cloggers in the event center, too
I'd looped my fingers through the chain-link fence
and watched what I could see through a distant open door
Listened while oddly-dressed folks clogged and clomped and jigged
Their steps sounding like horseshoes hitting hard

But mostly the fairground sits
Waiting
Already matted down in spots
as if in anticipation of the caramel apple-eating crowds
If you look with squinted eyes
small yellow flowers near the cow barn
look like fallen kernels of roasted, buttered corn
scattered for black crows to nip
There is a sound like horse-chuffs on the wind
making me miss horses all the harder
Manure brownness tints the show-ring
where proud sheep and goats have marched in parade step
I hear a swooping whisper, a memory
of Ferris wheel, of Tilt-a-Whirl
while the smacks of skee balls faintly, faintly tap
Or is that a branch blowing, scraping somewhere near?

I feel the fair
but she will not come to me until July, or sometimes August
and so I watch and wait
my tired head resting on my arms
at my night-black bedroom window
Dim sparks seen as I sit staring before sleep
might be ghosts from last year's midway
or premonitions of golden, jig-dancing lights to come
in July, or maybe August

I'll be happy one more week again, I will
with fair-time animals to see and meet
Rabbits, pigs and soft-eyed cows
horses, goats and woolly sheep
Yes, I'll be happy when the animals have come
when this old June has lolled away