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The Artist’s
Almanac
July 2006
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Fourth of July
The ground is always hard
beneath the spread of
Fourth of July quilts.
And the wait is always
a little longer than
children want to wait.
So they lay back and look up
cupping shaggy heads
in stubby laced fingers,
crossing browned legs
to jiggle a white sneaker
anxiously in the air.
Wish away the daylight
that dawdles now
at compressing its spent color
into floating stripes of rose
pink
then tucks them away
behind the hills.
Together, we wait for this
reluctant
night to pull a black canopy
up around her neck then
cannons roar and soar and
streak!
A thousand mouths gape
in open wonder as if on cue.
Earth quivers innards quake
heavens burst
and run down the face of sky.
We have duly impregnated this summer with celebration.
Our flag, drawn in burning
embers,
is seared into the night.
Applause crisply contagiously ripples
some whistle through their teeth.
This Fourth of July fizzles and goes out.
Dark erases all mention of our intrusion.
Mothers meticulously fold their
quilts.
Children take their fathers' hands, fan out
collecting little family groups.
Drawn by unerring magnets to
front stoops
they turn to stare back into the empty night
searching for the faces of their lost brothers
who must forever come to pay the
cost
of our independence,
our Fourth of July.
Fourth of July,
by Susie Sims Irvin, is reprinted here with the author’s permission
from a book of her poems and paintings, Clouds for the Table,
published by Meetinghouse Books, Franklin, Tennessee, in 2001.
Susie’s older brother was killed in Belgium in World War II,
following the Battle of the Bulge.
Photo by Bill Puryear
Hendersonville City Park July 2005.
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