sleeping without walls
the fields that year taught the art of sleeping outside,
sleeping without walls, watching the stars and moon,
our dreams spun from sunsets and morning dew ~
we slept in bedrolls configured from old white sheets and
the khaki wool blankets my uncles took to war, i wondered
about my uncles as i did about many people, many things
and that summer held varied delights, climbing trees,
eating cherries without washing them . . . oh! ~
and there were blueberry bushes and fig trees and
i lined the path to the food hut with odd sunday stones
i said my own prayers while the big girls were at Mass
and marveled at my middle-aged mother’s plump knees
i marked her spirit for wearing bermudas, for joining
children’s games, sitting ’round fires, making ‘smores ~
now I wonder at summer camp morphing into metaphor,
all our lives we did those things: gathering dreams,
mom and me, outsider artists sleeping without walls
© 2013, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes (The Poet by Day & Coffee, Tea and Poetry & The BeZine)