Summer’s First Party Was

the kind of party
where the best salad
mixed pretzels and strawberry
Jello. Time passed
we looked at old pictures and rain
from our chairs in the garage
studied your father’s Many Enthusiasms
hanging from rafters and walls. “Is that a beekeeper’s hat?”
someone asks in awe. Everyone has a bear story to tell
or a snake story
or both
When the sun comes out, someone else
says, You can actually see the corn grow
We admire the long curve of wet raked lawn
The allium and bachelor button and thick
stand of what we all call bishop’s weed
how your garden stretches the eye upward
to the edge of the vineyard. Later I drive home
through the bright green hills of our whole lives
from my kind of party