{"id":66106,"date":"2020-06-27T14:09:57","date_gmt":"2020-06-27T18:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=66106"},"modified":"2020-07-25T12:33:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T16:33:31","slug":"k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/k\/","title":{"rendered":"K."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nThe summer I was sixteen
\nyou yet weren\u2019t
\nwas unlike all other summers
\nwe had shared till then
\nneighboring grandparents
\neach with our own
\nseasonal haven – you
\nwith two sisters, a brother
\nI just had me<\/p>\n

Our side of Horseshoe Lake
\nsummer home to
\nother grandparents
\nother grandkids
\nmany transient short-stay
\nweekend grandkids
\nnone ever as close
\nphysically or in friendship
\nas the five of us<\/p>\n

Your sisters found me odd<\/p>\n

Your brother
\na best-of-summer friend
\nsimply glad to have had some
\ngender balance
\non the beach
\ntraipsing through woods on
\nsome random adventure or just
\nplaying badminton<\/p>\n

The summer I was sixteen
\nfound us all in a
\ndifferent place
\nwoodland hikes were
\nless frequent
\nrarely in full groups <\/p>\n

Gone were times
\nseeking imagined oddities
\nfeigned adventure
\ndays of play
\nmake-believe
\nchildhood adventure
\noutgrown<\/p>\n

All replaced by more solitary
\njust-the-two-of-us
\nstrolls with less structure
\nmore purpose<\/p>\n

One of those afternoon
\njust-the-two of us
\njaunts
\nwas different
\nbecame welcome on<\/p>\n

a trail we had trod a
\nhundred times or more
\nstopping
\nat a place we had
\nlong known
\nwhere the afternoon sun
\nsplit the canopy of
\ntowering pines
\nswaying birch<\/p>\n

I sat down on familiar
\ndecaying log, you
\npromptly sat on my lap
\nI took the hint
\nfollowed solid hunch<\/p>\n

and suddenly understood
\nthe phrase
\n\u2018easy as falling off a log\u2019<\/p>\n

The next day
\nwanting to always remember
\neschewing simply
\ngrabbing my knife and
\ncarving our initials in
\nnearby tree trunk<\/p>\n

I returned to that very spot
\nwith a sign
\npainted that morning in
\nthe woodshed<\/p>\n

a singular plank
\nnailed with gusto to a
\nwooden stake
\nand hammered the marker
\ninto the
\npine-needle carpeted
\nsandy earth. <\/p>\n

Later I took you back there<\/p>\n

showed you my
\nsign of
\ndevotion<\/p>\n

You suddenly found agreement
\nwith your sisters
\nthinking me crazy
\nfearing someone else
\nwould see it
\non this trail others
\nrarely used<\/p>\n

you wanted anonymity
\nI offered raw proclamation<\/p>\n

Your incredulity thus
\nnegated by rash of affection
\nyou kissed me
\nyet again
\nwhich I took as a sign
\nleaving the wood one there <\/p>\n

Five years later
\nI returned to those woods
\ntook a quick walk
\nfeeling many of the
\nsame feelings on that
\nsame path, arriving at the
\nsame glade, that very log<\/p>\n

The clearing was
\nbecoming more overgrown
\nas we had all
\nmoved on<\/p>\n

time, nature
\nlogically reclaiming the woods
\nyet I found the log
\nright there where we
\nhad left it<\/p>\n

unused, more decayed
\nit crumbled to
\nmy touch
\nI well understood
\nthe sentiment
\nwry, inherent irony <\/p>\n

The sign, incredibly
\nremained
\ntoppled, face down, behind
\nthe log
\nentangled in forest vines<\/p>\n

I yanked it free
\nturned it over<\/p>\n

The wood had weathered to
\nwarped, cracked
\nparchment-brittle-gray
\nyet the bold
\nwhite lettering from
\nancient can of
\noil-based paint
\nI found in the woodshed
\nstill told
\nthe story we had written<\/p>\n

I had commemorated <\/p>\n

to your blushing, stifled giggle
\nfaux chagrin
\njust our names, a date
\na small heart
\nbeneath the facts<\/p>\n

I looked at it for a while
\nmarveling
\nat its preservation
\nlife as artifact of our past <\/p>\n

The woods had kept it for me
\nI felt It right to do the same<\/p>\n

I put the sign back
\nwhere, how I found it
\nthen walked the rest of that trail
\none more time <\/p>\n

Always an instinctual guy
\nto this day
\nI still always believe in signs<\/p>\n

\u2013 Mark L. Lucker
\n\u00a9 2020
\nhttp:\/\/lrd.to\/sxh9jntSbd<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The summer I was sixteen you yet weren\u2019t was unlike all other summers we had shared till then neighboring grandparents each with our own seasonal haven – you with two sisters, a brother I just had me Our side of Horseshoe Lake summer home to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":694,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[3610,3442],"class_list":["post-66106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous","tag-2020hr5","tag-2020poetrymarathon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/694"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66106"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79421,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66106\/revisions\/79421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}