Summer soulstice.

Ramping up through the time of being a daughter
thrust into the world to bear the torch of a family.

The first – the oldest is for a time the youngest,
then then middlest, as the elders go and the youngers arrive.

Now, not a child, not an adult.
Trusted with independence, a satellite family of one.

It is the age of rapid mental transit.
It is the age of raped dinner and pillaged drunken Saturdays.

… the age of 50-mile drives for a movie,
of the hour’s journey from door to bedroom.

It is the longest day of life; it is the shortest night.
June comes and June goes with the arrival of one grey hair.

The frenzy slows; supervision all but disappears.
Jumping the generation gap, grasping for a grip.

Trying to remember what the other side felt like,
a vague recollection of seasons spent waiting.