Poetry
Motown Summer
It might’ve been the hottest day
of summer, maybe the hottest
there ever was. A day when
the hornets and wasps
hid in shadows, fat and fuzzy,
sucking nectar into their crops.
And the Earth itself seemed
to crave something unattainable.
We set fire to that day
and watched it burn,
clearing the ground
of all that felt trivial or tired,
and drove on, through
the liminal landscape,
like fugitive arsonists,
leaving childhood
forever.
So why does that day still return,
long after those around it burned?
I remember the glass heat, vinyl sticking
to the backs of bare legs,
the faint gasoline smell on fingers,
the fruit-gum taste on your mouth,
the tinny sound of hope carrying
across the cornfields – a Motown song
that played on every radio in America
that summer, blooming extravagantly
for a few weeks, then gone.
A disposable day, a culture of
convenience: bottles, cans, dresses,
dreams; loyalties, friendships.
All could be replaced, in a way
that almost felt like freedom.
So why does that day still return,
long after those around it burned?
And what should we – knowing now
that our lives are largely fire – do
about the survivors?