A concatenation of images: one from some time ago, time in Post Office Square in downtown Boston, which has in its center a fountain. Said fountain is a broken ring of stone about the right height for sitting on, which sprays out a number of little arcs of water around its circumference into a drain. In the center of the ring is an apparatus: five supports of a ring, and that ring jets water upwards, which spills down again onto the ground, not a restraining pool, the pavement of the Square.

There was a security guard there, maintaining the Square. She told people to stop bicycling, and watched the children, not commenting on the one who had managed to misplace clothes entirely, and who was screeching with delight under the water and waving pudgy hands in the air. The children's parents sat around on benches and walls near the fountain, fanning themselves and looking wilted.

Being a grownup must be quite depressing.

Then today, with the wind and rain, and going down to the ocean, to splash around on the beach instead of going up onto the headland and the rocks like I usually do.

It rains
I, down to the beach
When it is still all wind
And slow, heavy drops scattered enough to dance between
To kick up diamonds out of the surf
That vanish again into glass
And watch the sky split itself open
Birthing thunder.

I remember a day
Like this one
When the air was thick and hot and heavy
And the wind was not enough to funnel
Between the great stone buildings.
But the children laughed:
A great plume of water spilling upwards
And pouring out like the splash
Of an upended, bottomless bucket
Onto the pavement at the center of the Square.
The children laughed, and ran
And charged through it, screaming
Clothes plastered to skin
And one completely naked, shouting
The delight of the cold and wet.
And I, through the fountain
The only one over four feet tall:
The parents laughed, and sat
And suffered the heat in dubious dignity.
The sky rolled with cloud
And they gathered in their charges
To flee the coming storm
As if they feared they would melt in the rain.

Too many adults, here, too
Even the children wrapped in towels and shivering
And I, barefoot back home
Because my shoes are filled with mussel shells.