Schools have unleashed their burden of bustle
roughly onto blanched sidewalks with orange flames
tickling their palms and heels, bubbling
the cusp of each approaching second,
tickless digits enclosed in cell phones.
Maroon pailings slid aside by city-paid lifeguard.
Blued water shifting ebbs every cannonball
sousing towels both tossed and laid carefully,
tarrying tanners with inappropriately loosened
spaghetti strings, mischief sought and mischief
serendipitous, mist of hose half-plugged
by thumb, of misaligned fountain unused
to marauding breezes, plodding sneakers
cacophonous under stucco Spanish arches
blindingly reflective to the non-sunglassed.
Popsicles sweat next to pop ice in the oft
opened 7-11 freezer, green and lonesome
yellow passed by for red and red and red
and purple even. And the sun, the sun,
even under the blast of commercial a/c
overheated arm hairs cling to their warmth,
distancing themselves from the fickle chill.
Black widows in ice plant hermitage, the last
vestige of non-brown planted, unpainted surface.
Prickly khaki crab grass kicking bare feet
to the muddled coolness of green, half to calf.
The tickle of eight tiny furred feet on ankle
unnoticed, for a time.