Jerry Rumspringer

I want to know where all the summers go.
Do they pack up and move when you turn twenty-three?
Do they disconnect from the years they protected you
From youth’s reckless speed?
Around the bend, they drew an end…
Fending off the end (Start it all again)
Fending off the end (Start it all again)
Fending off the end (Start it all again)
I think I know where still the flowers grow.
They’re under the van we bought when I turned seventeen:
A reminder of what can wilt and take longer yet to fade away.
A game hard to play,
But harder yet to walk away:
Fending off the end (Start it all again)
Fending off the end (Start it all again)
Fending off the end (Start it all again)
If, to support yourself, you had to turn your back
On the only support you ever had,
That’s the cost of feeling safe.
I don’t know if I’ll want to a play a show
At the close of those forty-hour weeks,
And if that’s the cost of feeling safe,
Then let this be our leap of faith:
Every kid in Wallingford is trying to borrow
lead shoes to make their way down to the bottom
of the Quinnipiac to fend off
The hurtful end of adolescence,
Until then, we tread.