for Amy
It was June again, towards the end,
all blue and green, full June, leaves shining
like droplets from a garden hose you waterfalled
through the morning sun into a backyard pool,
the kind you blow up ring by ring—remember now
the spatter sound of the first drops on plastic,
the beach ball smell of it, the endlessness
of summer?
It was my year to turn fifty and I wanted
to see things near as well as things far
so my younger daughter and I went walking
the three blocks to Walgreens, just down on the corner,
for reading glasses for me. I saw it
when we were five or six houses down—
a small, lady-sized chair, painted grass green
waiting at the edge of the sidewalk in a row
of mismatched end tables and empty baskets.
I want that, I said.
It was a rocker, I saw when we got closer.
What I love about a rocking chair
is how it lets you go
backward and forward, over and over
without ever leaving where you are. I want that,
I told my neighbor, and I gave my seven dollars
to her son who was watching over things and he set
the chair back from the sidewalk for us to pick up
on our way back.
It was a lucky morning, so I got blue
cats-eye glasses with sparkles in the corners.
And we got ice cream to walk back home with
because it was already about as hot as you could
stand, the sun that hot and bright. Drops of sweet
running from wrist to elbow and us trying
to eat fast and pick up the rocker at the same time—
she took one arm and I took the other and between us
we carried it through the morning
like a bride.