End of School Year Poem

I packed my backpack one last time.

Old pencils with worn out erasers,

Dry markers that have forgotten how to spread color across a page,
Used up spiral notebooks
And all the words they held.

I packed up my desk and left it for another year
Another student
Another day.

And I lowered the lid.

My baseball cap is waiting for me
At home on the bedpost.
My swimming suit is neatly folded next to my summer shorts
In a drawer that’s barely used from September to May.

I wave good-bye to science, and math, and grammar, and all those classes.
But somewhere in the middle of July, I’m bound to realize.

It has all followed me into summer.
The science finds me as I explore the meadow and the grove.
The math returns as I count out change at the store and the farmer’s market.
The grammar is there and the vocabulary I learned, when I pick up that book that’s been waiting for summer and I fall asleep each night with the characters who live in the book on my bed stand.
And the religion has followed me home as well.

I see God in the early morning sunrise. The hayfield. The mother and her calf. The watermelon, so sweet and juicy. The long car ride to the beach and new states and new places.

The holy water is always waiting. The kneeler is ready for my hands to lower, so my knees can bend. And as I enter the Church during these weeks of summer vacation,
I realize over and over that I didn’t leave anything behind.
It is all right here.
Inside.
Where I keep all the best things and they stay wrapped up in memories.
In that place where I…

Remember.

 -D.Bossert