Fourth of Juanita

Juanita is July. Of course she is. Heat and unrideable breeze. The burn begins when you swing your legs out of bed, walk barefoot across wooden floor to the open window. A smell of fresh tar and creosote. Flags fail to flap. She is a memory to fondle, a token in my pocket, a ring on a chain around my neck. Or did I only imagine? Do I? Apt. Each firework always bigger than the last, louder, choreographed to music and passion’s swell. Incendiary spray of purple, green, the surprise of golden meteors pause, drop like molten wax, cool to cinder you flick from your arm. You wait for the next explosion. The mind’s eye widens in recollection: a night to remember, one like no other. Such spectacles can’t be trusted. However they are all I have. Like a donkey I follow in the tracks worn before me. What has been traveled, what will be traveled again and again. July the exception. Fireflies, firework grand finale, every constellation undiminished wavers some promise overhead.

from Her Name Is Juanita, Kore Press, 2009