Swarms Seen In Summer Some Time Ago

I Joseph loved the Monarchs Marching in their patterned parade dress Gold and flecks of brown with black In those late days of summer's surrender We twisted together in teenage adventure Taking on tasks to tan our skin And perhaps put some jingle in our cutoffs Bronze and baking beneath that Southampton sky We were far from rich in coin But ever wealthy in our laughing At what the wealthy hired us to do Those stuffed silk shirts needed never to water gardens And unlike us could not ever imagine Pulling dandelions from the gravelly circular drive That only their drivers knew the shortcut to A house too big, to be so empty And sit so close to the ocean's elegance Just a backdrop in the barely breathable humidity In the long legged beachgrass rushes Posture lined up like the New York City Rockettes Began the earthy folly of the Butterfly Ballet Sun filtered symphonic surrealism Played out before us In majesty of a multiplication table magnitude Swarms of summer escape, too many to count The fallout of flapping paperthin wings Creating a breeze only we were caught in There, two...unnoticed in their seaside town Making merry as we made minimum wage True the benefit package kept us coming back Long after out tans had turned pale II Scott walked his stiff way, each afternoon Mad and mumbling, at five Prompt as the workday ended, ever the same stains Alongside the stretch of the railroad ties With giant strides to speed his thirst towards quench At the crosslight corner blue collar bar Head down deliberate to quicken his gait Never noticing the goldenrod standing at attention His cynical eyes fixed only upon his size thirteen shoes Dare he to smile at the world whistling by The very sound of carefree clamour brought on allergic rash I drove the length of his lumbering Once on a day when he did not offer to wait Although headed down that very same path I found myself alone and mauled by a buzzing static A sound so foreign I needed to investigate Like Dorothy spying black funnel clouds A swarming of opalesque iridescent wonder A waterfall whisp of prismatic precision Filling the field and fading the tracks from sight Dragonflies migrating with military might Took to their Kamikaze flights Dizzying me from my determined direction to follow the man Who saw nothing of beauty bewitching And I, alone, was granted admission to the grand performance Of fairies parachuting from the sky