The Shameless Summer (Cayuga Street, St. Paul, MN)

The Shameless Summer
(And the old mud hole of Cayuga Street)

The street-road was being torn up, to be a highway,
A number of men worked at the end of the street
Where there reside two dead ends, South to Indians
Mound (and ahead)
We all stooped over and under and around the bridge
they were building
The mud hole, where we swam, seem to wait for us
this year of my life
From mud too mud, lumped and cool, we swam in it slowly
Waved our muddy hands over the top of it, feeling the
cool wind
Above our heads of this mud swamp, the highway to be
Here we were all wavering under the shameless sun
I was but twelve years of age, restless like everyone
And as the darkness fell upon us all, a starry darkness
Roger, and me, Mike and Doug, and a number of girls
lay face upward, on this stale mud water
Laughing and playing childlike, unreal, unimaginable
On the blanket of mud on shore, Roger and she lay
floating away, in some starry unnatural way
To me it was just play, play in dishwater broth, I was
Only twelve you see…

1/21/2007 #1629 (Dedicated to the Old Gang of the 60s, of Cayuga Street)) St. Paul, Minnesota))


Note: The mud hole was not there the following year, but we must have gone to it a dozen times that summer. There is nothing like a little swimming pool, half mud or not, that can make the summer more interesting than normal, and it did. I think for Roger, it was a playground for him to seduce his new girlfriends, for me it was play, but then Roger was a number of years older than I, perhaps four or five. Mike, my brother was now fifteen, and I think drinking and a few other things was on his mind, and we did that there likewise, and a few joy rides there after. All in all, it was a brazen summer.