in summer shade-
deep shadows of sleeping cats, watchful of
rose white and rose red,
both sandle-footed and
cold-grass frolicking, issuing to the back yard
world a summer-girl chirrup succeded by one
toothy boast and one
shy smile.
I was a strawberry sometime then-
a summer dress made of me, a scarlet fruit-
clothed in a berry-hued and seed-studded
white-dotted fabric frock,
I twirled and orbited a small place
like the same true fruit in cool soil
among chastening berry blooms
in the small sullen garden.
The strawberry and I-
plump and red, sweetning in the summer sun
laughing at the distillation of time,
at the abscence of memory then.
-Nicole Rudick
Brooklyn, NY
