I Only Have Fifteen More Nights Of Summer

I've lived here for close to
Three years and I've never noticed
This before:
At night it is louder outside my house
Than in,
I'm laying in a tent that is too small
For those it is supposed to shield
And I listen to the sounds
Of suburbia,
The Costa Mesa freeway a quarter mile west of me,
Planes taking off from John Wayne Airport two miles
North by northeast,
A neighbor I have never seen over a wall
In her apartment
Talking to someone I cannot hear,
She sounds pretty,
Another neighbor setting a ringer
On his mobile phone,
Testing various beeps and chirps,
Fireworks from Disneyland fifteen miles north,
Crickets alive in the bougainvillea,
Figs falling from the tree in my yard,

I had picked up over 50 of them before
We built the tent,
Lovey and I,
He wearing a small camping flashlight on his forehead
That was given me by one of my favorite people,
We took with us our sleeping bags
And two small stuffed animals
And a foam hand with index finger outstretched
That I had bought him at a baseball game,
He likes it when I pretend it's a real hand
And say I need YOU
(pointing)
To put the SLEEPING BAG
(pointing)
Over THERE
(pointing)

We take turns at most things,
Tonight it is my turn to sleep
With the stuffed black ape,
He'll be guarded by
The stuffed lion,
We say our goodnights
And I love yous
And he falls asleep crowding me,
Me awake and alone amidst
People talking, moving, living

Today was a day without order, structure, plan
We played inside until we decided
To go for a bike ride,
We played inside again
Until the power went out
On my block
And we went to the pool to drown our sorrows
In chlorinated water and frozen lemonade,
I have 15 more nights of this,
Of days without agenda

Soon he'll start school
And I'll start working again
And I'll need a reminder that I lived days like today
And laid next to a sleeping boy in the dark,
And looked through the net roof of a
Cheap, cramped tent
And watched a full moon rise over a horizon
Of fig and lemon tree branches
And shine on my boy,
Breathing deeply hugging a stuffed lion
With absolutely nothing to do tomorrow
But wait for the sun

I'll need a reminder that things like this really happened to me;

This is it.