The Moon's Violin

The bottoms of my feet were and always will be like moccasins
from jumping around the bonfire and stepping on broken clam shells.
My hair spiraled in a tangled mess down my back and
it was thirty-five different shades of brown from the sun.
I shouted the lyrics to a song that I had heard the night before
and an irritated looking toad flew from the reeds into the lake
Sometimes I sat on the shore and told my secrets to unimpressed mud puppies until they fluted out their lungs as if to scold me.
On the weekends I ate hot dogs behind the boathouse
with the other half-fish kids.

One night I army crawled into the old Indian burial ground...
When the spirts came out of their boxes for a midnight stroll I realized that they meant no harm and smiled to myself as they drifted between the pines.
On the walk home the moon hummed with the sound of a violin
being played somewhere out of sight.
Often the Northern Lights would explode into the sky without warning and I would watch them until I scared myself.
On cold nights I slept on a creaky bunk bed with fish covers
but on the warm nights when I felt brave I slept on a hammock that rocked to the beat of the waves against the break wall.

Many hot July days were spent rowing small boats out to bigger boats moored
in the deep water so that I could look under them
and spy on the big mother bass that had come in to lay eggs in a lake-bottom home with a hull for a roof.
If it got too warm I would slide into the water, careful not to touch the bottom in seaweed areas.
I kept an eye out for pike because I had heard the story of the unfortunate cousin, or grandmother, or brother who had lost a finger to a particularly moody fish on a morning swim...
... and I was very content with ten fingers and ten toes.

When the sign of the Lion began its annual reign over the Sun I got desperate.
I mourned the passing of the early summer months and tried my hardest to stretch the days out as long as possible with trips to the marsh and late nights spent with my pants rolled up to my knees
wading with a flashlight in search off crayfish hiding under the rocks.
I could feel the days becoming consistently breezier and at night the stars began to glow with the cold neon light that signified the advent of Autumn.
Early one morning, as I counted the trout in a creek I happened to look up knobby old tree, and before my eyes a single maple leaf switched from green to orange.
Leo had grown much too old and weak to stop Virgo from smuggling in the Fall.

As I stumbled back home sad and defeated, I remembered all of the horrible things that Fall had forced upon me in the past:
Math classes and jackets and dreary gray mornings that gave way to cold rainy nights. The horrible memories of having to brush my hair and listen to crusty old teachers banter on about the dead and why they had died snaked their way into my brain.
My knees failed me and I met the gravel road face to face.
The hope that I had stock piled began to leave my body in the form of a bloody nose and I stayed face down waiting for The Autumn to Strike.
Right before I lost consciousness the Late August Sun used it's last bit of strength to frighten away the shabby looking clouds and silence the wind.

I lifted my head and looked to the sun for some type of reassurance.
It beamed at me!
I continued the walk home, half-smiling and somewhat lost in the thick fog of my thoughts. I had loved the Summer unwaveringly and in return it had sacrificed itself to give me one last T-shirt wearing, barefoot day to
cannonball into the lake, use my outdoor
voice, and say my goodbyes to the Newts that I had become friends with. When dusk fell, all of the crickets, gulls and bullfrogs on the bay got together and put on one last concert.
As the music stopped I screamed: "See You Next Year" over the silent lake. "See You Next Year!" the waves responded. I knew that it wasn't an echo.