sleeping with walls

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)