(slight) Break from the hot weather

Break

When lunch was nearing
we heard a familiar distant rumble
then a plinking of a slight storm rain
on the tin roof

but we didn’t expect the relief when later
on the porch eating ice-pops
we found the weight of summer
had lifted for a moment
like a sheet bloomed above an unmade bed
and in that sudden lightness they remember
to play old outside games
raising lids on toy boxes
in the banished garage playroom,
racing, scattering beneath the humid canopy
that would soon descend

like the solitude that ends when children,
piled in daddy’s car, return from
play grounds or birthday parties to a house
made orderly again in their absence.