Sunday, June 17, 2007

shorts

a large, speckled rock,
maybe the size of a kiwi
a restaurant-pack of individual serve apple-cinnamon jelly
an old shoelace
a dozen or so individually wrapped toothpicks

Such are the contents
of the pockets
of the shorts
of an 8-year-old boy.

a dried-up bouncy ball
a red water balloon
an old kleenex,
unused of course
(that’s what sleeves are for!)
a sheet of scrumply paper with Daddy’s number at the office
just-in-case
another sheet of even scrumplier paper with some tic-tac-toe games
a green water balloon

Fortunately for the 8-year-old boy,
he has two pairs of shorts…


© Elizabeth Lorris Ritter
12/21/01
(based on some mid-August shorts
in Schroon Lake, NY)

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