Sumer is Icumen In(diana)

Sweet Corn

I grew up in Indiana,

but a certain cynicism lives in my heart,

gained no doubt

from surreptitious midnight readings

of New Yorker cartoons.

This caused me to truly believe

that those quiet Indiana evenings

were the fool’s paradise

of a witty (and nattily dressed)

writer on the upper east side of Manhattan.

That shucking sweet corn on the front porch—

corn just picked and hauled to my car

by a glistening young man for $2.00 a dozen—

was a false memory.

That washing and drying dishes

while singing in harmony was only

done in mythic Minnesota towns.

I thought these dubious memories

required a highly paid therapist

until tonight, when we ate the corn,

tender as the memory of fireflies—

eating till we were awash with summer;

till we were covered with the warm juice of summer.

Now we wash and dry all the dishes in the world,

singing “Down in the Valley”

for every little babe with wide eyes,

for every tired mother on our sweet-corn planet.