Dancing Through Sprinklers

(note: attempted to write a sestina:) )

Long summer days once overflowing with laughter and lemonade,

bursting with the sound of the ice cream truck and the scent of freshly cut grass,

Filled a tiny heart with happy abandon,

Compelled tiny feet to dance through jetting sprinklers

Conveyed the jubilation of childhood

in the form of chocolate ice cream lips on a little girl.

Many dreams found their home in the mind of the girl,

providing bliss more refreshing than an ice cold glass of lemonade.

A young one blessed with the wisdom of childhood,

her dreams were as solitary as one feels when standing alone in a wilderness of high grass

yet were as free as that of a child running through sprinklers —

An exuberance she never longed to abandon.

Those fledgling days she had filled with childish abandon

Scattered upon them the shiny sparkles of youth natural for a young girl.

She’d ran a million times through the sprinklers

She’d drank a trillion glasses of lemonade

and discovered delight in finding tiny creatures in the grass.

Basked in the joy of her childhood.

But one day did she discover the ebbing away of her childhood,

the disappearance of her carefree abandon.

In the yard, she could no longer smell the scent of freshly cut grass,

could no longer find the essence of the tiny girl.

She missed selling numerous twenty-five cent glasses of lemonade,

longed to dance again through the misty sprinklers.

She yearned for the rainbow spray of the sprinklers,

pined for her lighthearted spirit of childhood.

She craved but one glass of freshly squeezed lemonade,

wanted nothing more than to relinquish all her duties in full abandon.

She ached to be once more a young girl,

skipping without a care in the world through freshly cut grass.

Untrimmed, higher and higher grew the grass,

their green completely engulfing the diminutive sprinklers.

And yet, there was the spirit of the girl

freely frolicking in the overgrown lawn, a remnant of her childhood.

Still young and filled with ephemeral lighthearted abandon

like one of the rapidly-dissolving ice cubes in her homemade lemonade.

Grasping the joy of a childhood filled with cool lemonade,

she was filled with serenity as she remembered the fresh scent of dewy grass,

and recalled an upbringing filled with a girl dancing through misty rainbow sprinklers.