Last Week of Camp

a new poem

Photo: Laura Danner, searchlight housing fallen to the beach, Fort Flagler State Park

Last Week of Camp

Giving up its green ghost, the parade field 
lays down, yellowed and wind-warped,  
prepped at last for our unsocked feet 

to thread our toes through summered blades.    
Late August, and last night’s moon still swells,  
grows fuller somehow, toboggans down the caverns  

of our blood subdued only by the sugar-high  
of time we don’t yet know we are already losing as  
we take a walk on the old fort’s grounds— 

past the barracks where someone blasts Synchronicity, 
past the office - the camp secretary typing out 
tonight’s edition of The Flagler Foghorn in Bolero rhythms -  

past the chapel posing now as a symphony hall, 
past the wooden huts where we hear this year’s 
concert mistress practicing her solo again and again 

as a low voice implores her: Adagio! ... Adagio!   
while we snicker and sneak into the PROHIBITED AREA  
walk on toward the west beach, silently daring  

the park’s ranger to find us, stopping only once to pick  
stubborn apples from the highest branches we can reach  
and are relieved to find they are not ready yet.   

---