Seven Summers

The summer I was twelve I don’t remember
Thirteen we drive the Continent, hit Chamonix
The summer I’m fourteen go back alone to Čechy
and miss a connection and send her

weeping through the night, I just couldn’t work the door
Summer jobs the summer I’m fifteen and up and down
the back roads on our bikes with Trisha Brown
Sixteen a family that knows how to live in Strasbourg

remodels my French, a month sans meaningful exchange
The summer I am seventeen Eurailing hostel to hostel
with Magda called Maggie, wow that Scottish one in a castle
Every day the summer I’m eighteen it rains

and crouch under eaves with Brontës in a plastic chair
The next summer a job in Bath, it’s golden
selling hardbacks to strangers on their way to the spring
I never go to Stratford-upon-Avon, I go to Weston-super-Mare

This poem appears in the August 2025 print edition.