That Green Summer

There was a poetry that summer that I had no words for
With its need to work, to earn
And the lust to do nothing but sit, as the world turned
To burn through those three months like the sun, before school began again 

We worked as lawn men, mowing grass
And between us passed a great poetry, walking on quiet feet, cat-like,
As I learned without words to speak something felt and not seen—
How the world fits together
All the parts working, in cities and towns
To make the merry-round go ‘round:
The buying of gas
The loading of trucks
The cutting of grass
For what?

For little kingdoms and dominions to survey before the day fades
Wherein sit kings and queens eager for a lucky play that falls their way
(Though, of course, it rarely does)
And in their waiting, they miss the consolation 
Because what you get instead is an orange sunset and the smell of cut lawns and constellations spinning endlessly as the day grows long 
And the far off longing to be “gone” or “there” is revealed, at the end, to be deception,
Since what we get, ever and only, is here and now

We tasted the drink of longing that grinds us down, in the end
But which first befriends you and makes of you a god, too young to touch the ground
As the fruit of the tree, still ripe, like morning rises, awakening and singing in you its song
As if the branches could only, ever rise
As if the sky could only promise and provide undying freedom

Little did I know then that we already knew the secret:
All that matters, in the end, is friendship 
And someone to enjoy sweet, hard work with 
And the quiet passing of poetry that knows you before you know it