Passing

Today on my front lawn
four young girls stop without seeing me
to shout and play
in some small interruption
of their passing down the street.
Two of them already have small breasts
beneath their shirts, mild buds
they do not seem to care about
or even want this afternoon.
They stop to do cartwheels on my grass.
The tallest one, in a skirt, looks down
the sidewalk and seeing no one
tumbles, all legs and underpants.
When she whirls, she breaks
the daylight apart, and her friends
find that they must shriek
in this much joy. They somersault
until they make the green earth spin,
but this older one, their leader, this plain
girl who holds her face grave, distant
as some heavenly body, eyes fixed
on some far-off point the others
cannot see, cartwheels
into an awkward split, the sunlight
showing through to the small dark hand
blossoming beneath her pink nylon.
She rolls to her round knees.
In a moment something passes over her face:
It is like the light she has found here
in the dapples on the grass, and she
skips away with it as the others
skip behind. But scarcely past
the white driveway she slows,
walks, and this light leaves her
and comes fluttering back to my lawn,
left flattened now from the simple
crush of their small bodies.