June

It's when Nature's plot thickens,
blossoms giving way to other blossoms
yellow to pink to red to mauve
opening,  closing,  crinkling,  opening

not unlike a million plastic folders,
binders and tattooed notebooks
in clammy hands beneath languid eyes
batting back and forth upon their pages.

Each morning exhales Baby's Breath
through boughs sponged a hundred greens,
far below the radar of young adults
matching luggage beneath their eyes and

coffee rotting on their dry tongues
while they beat their brains with both hands,
fashioning bowls large enough to contain
the entirety of Dutch grammar,  calculus or

something else someone in a worn
tweed jacket insists they know by heart,
no different from the swallow's song,
learned over weeks before leaving the nest.