I was swinging my legs on the side of the picnic table
and that's when it occurred to me
how blue the sky was
and that made me think of Rilla of Ingleside and the scene in Rainbow Valley
where Rilla says “you'd have to say blue a hundred times
to express how blue it is.”
And something about that made you laugh
but I didn't think it was funny
and I dwelt again on the quote
and that made me think of the cover
of the new sheet music my piano teacher gave me last week
which is all covered in clouds and is
blue.
And something about that made you laugh, too,
and I didn't think that was funny either
and then I voiced that thought aloud in my head
and that made me think of last night at the dinner table
when I cracked about six jokes in a row
and my father looked at me with so much pride.
Oh, yes. I am funny.
And that made me think of the next couple of days
and just how wonderful I hope they will be
and something about that made you laugh
but I think I'll get the last laugh
because they say if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans,
but you are not God
even if you did laugh at my plans.
I hope you learn that someday.
And then my mother called me to come get a peach from the kitchen
and all the velvetiness made me think
of Sjolunden and of love and kisses and huckleberries as they taste in the woods
but I said nothing of this to you because
you always laugh.
And then I bit into the peach and the juice spilled onto my jeans
the hand-me-down jeans from my cousin that should have cost $150
but didn't
and it wasn't a catastrophe and I laughed about it as I cleaned up
because I was hopelessly drunk
on peach juice.
In the physical sense,
anyway.