A Midsummer Night's Dream

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Caught in the melancholy madness of Midsummer,
Trapped in time, suspended, caught between,
Like children on the verge of growing up -
Which we were -
In those starry summer nights
We tasted immortality, tasted our future,
Bypassed the several years between
That summer and the autumns, winters, springs
Ahead of us, bypassed straight into
Independence and wild, crazy, zany nights,
Walking on a street crowded with Chinese restaurants
And watching the world go by from the balcony
Of an ice-cream parlor;
We were young, just children
On the verge of growing into something more,
And for a moment I looked up and saw us for what we were -
Pizza at midnight and fighting to be the Beats,
The swearing and the posting in the halls -
We were something besides ourselves
In the madness of a starry night,
And somewhere along the way I got pushed,
A child's playful shove and I'm over the edge,
And I looked up and saw us for what we were:
Pretending that these faces we put on were real,
Pretending that this summer was our life
And our real life was the dream.