Always enough

On their walk home after school,
the middle school kids foraged among green ankles
in a patch of sour grass,
Don't swallow-Just chew, says the boy with braces
who spotted the little cache and reported it.

A lone girl sits criss cross applesauce
on the sidewalk in the shade of a pepper tree,
she wipes her brow, a paperback book splayed
in her lap.
She has never heard of a broken spine.
She doesn't look up-her ride must be late.

At the bus stop
a  stubbled man asks a teen
for the Time,
then asks the youth why he is out early,

I go to the Academy.
I have to go to work, he
explains.
How I remember those days,
retorts gruff with derisive smirk
Not the same, I'm sure,
the man reassures-
Academy.
Is this bus always late?

A crow hops next to the bench
looking sideways
every so often, adjusting his position
on cracking a tough nut,
or breaking a date.

Either way they look
too little
too late.



Painting by Boris Kustodiev (1911) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The lessons taut

“Surfing with Jesus”

the sign read

in front of the Pilgrim Church

across from the high school.

Not the Mormon one

across the parking lot

on the other street
with the lemonade stand

and portable orange bibles

towering high.

A teenage boy with earbuds

sits at the bus stop

smoking and snarling

waiting insecurely

to be picked up

or to be saved.

The bell has not yet rung.

Image By Hogyn Lleol at English Wikipedia (Self made by Hogyn Lleol) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Published in the 2017 Magee Park Poets Anthology.