Summer Love by John Drudge

Flattening nickels

On railroad tracks

Stealing cigarettes 

To smoke at the lake

Riding our bikes

Toward new found sin

Lamenting

The passage of time

And I remember that day

When I touched

Your hand

And shivered

With something fresh

And new

Lost in the tiny utopias

Of will

And the imagination

Of need

Racing the sunset

Across the surface

Of bliss

And following dreamscapes

Through fields

Of new realities

With the truth

Of our humanness

Hidden in every breath

Of summer’s freedom

As dusk settled

On your face

Pale in the powdered light

Of sudden endings

John is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology.  He is the author of four books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), and Fragments (2021). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.