How many more, I must ask myself,

such perfect ends of Augusts will I witness?—

the schoolgirls giggling in their months-old tans,

tittering of school soon to come as they hang on the curbs

as brown as maple seeds, the strip of curbside grass

sunparched in the tired shade beneath the maple

that in its globular cloud of green cumulus

holds now an arc, a bulge of rouge,

held up to the bored blue sky like a cheek to kiss.