I like the ice cream at the pool better

In a couple of days I'll be on an airplane heading home to Sweden and family, ocean and rocks, lakes and woods, the beauty that I remember from girlhood and that still inspires me. But before I leave my suburban US existence behind for a few weeks, here's a silly ode to the sun-baked, chlorine-scented, sunscreen-slicked flipside of my childhood memories.

They sell ice cream at the pool.

At the front desk there's a chart with pictures

Of twelve different kinds or more.

Mom says she's got ice cream at home in the freezer

So we're not going to buy it here,

But I like the ice cream at the pool better.

I like it when the ice cream sandwiches fuzzy my fingers with chocolate

And I have to lick it off.

I like it when the rocket pop paints my lips and tongue with reddish-purply blue

And my fingers trickly drops of sticky.

I want a drumstick salty with peanuts and a hard plug of chocolate

At the bottom of the cone.

I want to bite into a premium ice cream bar and feel the chocolate sheathing split and slide

Like the earth's techtonic plates

And cool vanilla lava slipping down my throat.

I want a choco-taco

Here and now

On the hot desert concrete

By the pool

Right

Before

Dinner!

Mom says she's got ice cream at home in the freezer

So we're not going to buy it here.

But I like the ice cream at the pool better.