Youth

Youth

Mother tossed me a jacket and sent me outside,
reminding me the rake was in the shed.
The old maple had dropped her leaves, so I tried
to wrangle them into a pile.
Joey hopped the back fence and asked
what I had to trade,
So I gave him a ball of wire
for a nine-volt battery.

I watched him grab up a handful of leaves
and crumble them over his head.
I did the same.
"Better not jump in 'em," Joey said,
"Moms are strict."

We chased a horsefly around to the front
and put him in a jar.
Joey noticed someone had drawn hopscotch
on the sidewalk-
Perfect squares, neatly numbered
in green chalk.
"You go first," Joey said.

We played until the sun began to shrink in the sky.
Mother called me in for dinner.
She licked her thumb
and wiped a smudge off my cheek.
I tried to shrug her off, and that's when I saw it.

I wondered why she had a stick of
green chalk
in the pocket of her apron,
but mothers are inscrutable sometimes.