200716 summer dinners

summer dinners

you sit on the wooden bench

bare feet dangling

and all the big brothers

tall and grown-up around you at the table

while mother and father talk the day over

under the grape vines

leaves and twining tendrils

reach out at you like hands

brother teases brother 

routine arguments are brought out for review

you, little sister, sit and listen

the sun setting shines green through the vines

the silhouetted trunks like veins 

among the leaves

bunches of grapes ripen

purple black and hazed blue

while hidden green and hard

more clusters lurk under the large hand-like leaves

the vines shut out the world

a room with living walls

flagged with white stones

the meal ends

trays are stacked with plates, forks, cups

and carried back into the still-hot house

brothers, sister

disperse 

on hand-me-down bikes, in second-hand cars

out into the summer night streets