The Propriety of Summer

Today New York examined
the propriety of summer:
detected premature insinuations

of it in the middle of a late May day:
randomly decided to survey it
as a fourteen-year-old girl – pretty,

pale, a little plump, and pony-tailed –
bravely wearing her new two-piece
black-and-yellow bathing suit –

dangling legs, up to the calves,
in all the cool wet candid sadness
of a lonely swimming pool:

didn’t feel so bad though, kicking
ripples back and forth – but:
should it be allowable this soon?

Oh, tell it to the moon. Some
ominously tiny premonition
nipped at her – which she ignored.

She turned herself into a sweaty
thug and subwayed to the Bronx.
New York is never bored.

.