Poetry Thursday: "Twelve"

"Twelve"

From the full bowl of ripe red cherries -
Choose and chew and let the flesh
Release the sweet sweet sweet;
Grip the pits in your teeth and
Flip the pits off your lips,
Arc through the air and BING! cherry
pits in the pots on the steps
That catch the mess of the cherries you chose
From the full bowl you hug 'tween your legs

Splat, and the spots stain the steps
where the pits miss the pots -
The pits and the pots and the chewed cherries and the
still full bowl
and the laughs that are left in an afternoon
of nothing to do.
Grip the pits on your thumb and
Flip the pits on the lawn and
Run around and run away and run on
until sundown, when you strip off your clothes
and hose yourself off in the warm vinyl smelling spray.

Now not sticky, now not sweet, now not sweaty, now not smelly,
Just wet and ready for bed, after a
double rub with a bright red sun-warmed towel.

Photo Credit: Jim Ward, via Google Images