Celebrating National Poetry Month: #18

Kick the Can

In the long after-suppers of summer
kids playing kick-the-can, like tiny
ghosts running here and there among
the trees, across the lawns, hold off

the weight of darkness, and the lights
go on in houses; radios tell
the weather, Doolittle over Tokyo,
or Robert Kennedy in L.A.

Hidden too well, deep in the barberry
by widower McCann's white porch,
or in the tomato-patches in yards
beyond the unlit alley, I hear

the can go clunking down the walk
and "One-two-three" and " All-in-free".
The years go by, I am not caught,
nor called home, all the long dark long.

-Robert Wallace