Remember promise
in giant red doors
you saw
while your knees shook
at the edge of the playground
with book bag and lunch pail, cold
from the thermos of milk? The sound
of the future
in the creak of the bindings
of black and white speckled notebooks?
How hope smelled in the wood
of sharp yellow pencils?

Remember how long red
margins ruled
down the side of lined paper
you titled "My Summer Vacation"
and you learned
at hard desks
how to write
in narrow white spaces
of weather, and clothes,
and long days at the beach—

not of skies bursting color
like peaches and plums
or birds' feet on sand
like the sweetness of time.