Summer Sundays, Anymore

We don't sit on the front porch
making a breeze with a fan
from the bank or the undertaker.
We're sequestered behind closed doors
with the A/C, TV and the VCR.
We don't take a slow drive in the country

to see the farm fields, horses, and cows,
and buy at the kid's lemonade stand.
We've seen it all at the movies
in digital color and we drive only
to and from the children's sports.
We don't dam up the nearby stream,

invite the neighborhood youngsters
for a cool sit-down splash.
We swim at the club or public pool,
order lunch there too, or maybe
drive to Denny's or Big Mac's.
We don't crack twenty-five pounds of ice

to make five gallons of peach ice cream
for treating everyone and his brother.
We go to Ben and Jerry's or Baskin's,
a mile or two away and eat it there.
We skip all that fuss and fun.
It hardly seems like Sundays anymore.


by Cay Hamilton, born 1913
from The Allure of the Blacksmith Shop