there were pictures on the walls…old black and whites…some in color…photos of daddy with his Mustang…momma down by the beach posin’ with a big smile on her face…photographs of the trailer we lived in up at the lake through summer time…nightly marshmallow roasts…hot dogs on the end of a wire clothes hanger…fireflies…

and every summer we’d pray that Labor Day would never come…summertime lastin’ forever…warm days of splashin’ in the water…breezes at evenin’ time as the adults popped open cans of Old Style and poured shots of Wild Turkey…moon glowin’ the whole time…wouldn’t go to bed ’til midnight…

there was always music playin’ as we lay awake under sheets with the windows open and the fan suckin’ in air and blowin’ it out…and over the music we’d hear the aunts and uncles…mom and dad arguin’ ’bout where life was headin’…whether or not to sell the lake trailer…what to do with grandma and grandpa once they reached that age…should they start buyin’ burial plots…move to a different school district…what was best for the children…

they would talk all night…Van Morrison sang in the background…conversation would turn to when they were younger…camp out stories…mom and dad’s first date…when my uncle came home from Vietnam…talk would turn quiet at that point…didn’t say much…

‘ventually the talk would die down completely…music would stop…bottles and cans could be heard rattlin’ ’round in trash bags …maybe a laugh or two…but then complete silence…

I’d stay up and listen to the quiet…the cicadas singin’…birds chirpin’ as early mornin’ broke…it was another day at the lake beginnin’ all over ‘gain…everybody stayed in bed…I’d go on these long walks explorin’ nature…lookin’ at the green leaves on trees…feel the sand in my feet…skip stones ‘cross the water…

bull frogs would be croakin’…fish jumpin with a blue sky above…soon summer would be over…where’d it go…