A Memory of the Old Farm

I remember the parting after.
We were beneath the ancient
apple trees, by the outhouse
inhabited by accretions of refuse
from the fallen farmhouse.
We shared, as it were, an absinthe,
seeing in each a newly awakened
adult in one, and a slowly dying
dream in the other. It is pleasant
to awake in the afternoon beneath
the gum trees, and to know
for the moment of awakening,
the cicadas are resting in the sleek blue
of a deepening sky. With that parting,
and the falling away of childhood,
so too fell the last of untrammeled summers,
and a twice-long storm.