Full-Frontal Ohio in June

A country detour I didn’t need
Brought me to some white and pink

Boys swinging from ropes
Into a big, busy stream,

Splashing each other’s youth
With shouts of love

Disguised as insult and water kicks.
I thought of Winslow Homer

And what it meant to be fifteen
In the naked Ohio sun,

Free from art because they were art,
Free from summer work, at least that day.

Yes, half out of Eden already—
Still, sometimes boys will be boys

And try to fly across big water
As if their heads were double crowned

Which the phrenologist promises
Such people do.

Eventually, with friendly waves,
I had to leave their rapture

To find the right road.
Until they do the same,

I wish the boys a good swim, a fine
Supper, and all the summers they need.

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Thomas Dukes has had poetry published in Poetry, South Carolina Review, Tar River Poetry, South Dakota Review, and many others. He has also published a prize-winning poetry collection,  Baptist Confidential, and Gospels From the Lower Shelf (2024) as well as fiction, nonfiction, journalism, and scholarship. He lives in northeast Ohio with his husband and a dog and a cat, who dominate their lives.