The sun came up before breakfast, <br />perfectly round and yellow, and we <br />dressed in the soft light and shook out <br />our long blond curls and waited <br />for Maid to brush them flat and place <br />the part just where it belonged. <br />We came down the carpeted stairs <br />one step at a time, in single file, <br />gleaming in our sailor suits, two <br />four year olds with unscratched knees <br />and scrubbed teeth. Breakfast came <br />on silver dishes with silver covers <br />and was set in table center, and Mother <br />handed out the portions of eggs <br />and bacon, toast and juice. We could <br />hear the ocean, not far off, and boats <br />firing up their engines, and the shouts <br />of couples in white on the tennis courts. <br />I thought, Yes, this is the beginning <br />of another summer, and it will go on <br />until the sun tires of us or the moon <br />rises in its place on a silvered dawn <br />and no one wakens. My brother flung <br />his fork on the polished wooden floor <br />and cried out, "My eggs are cold, cold!" <br />and turned his plate over. I laughed <br />out loud, and Mother slapped my face, <br />and when I cleared my eyes the table <br />was bare of even a simple white cloth, <br />and the steaming plates had vanished. <br />My brother said, "It's time," and we <br />struggled into our galoshes and snapped <br />them up, slumped into our pea coats, <br />one year older now and on our way <br />to the top through the freezing rains <br />of the end of November, lunch boxes <br />under our arms, tight fists pocketed, <br />out the door and down the front stoop, <br />heads bent low, tacking into the wind.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/those-were-the-days/
