Kids on the Edge

The faceless voice announced,

the adult swim will be ending in five minutes,

and we kids lined up at the pool's rounded

concrete edge, bent like Olympians

waiting for the gun, our shadows lunging

over the old man slowly backstroking

through the calm water, oblivious

beneath his swimming cap of

the potential energy of children

fueled on soda and soft pretzels

during the interminable fifteen-minute

wait found in every hour, with

soft rock playing from the speakers

high on poles--Afternoon Delight

to my kid mind was nothing more

than what we were doing every day

of that summer, longer then than now,

waiting by the side of that pool, always

poised on the edge of something.