Tonight's Poet Corner: Second Picnic

Second Picnic
by Belinda Roddie

A second picnic together
is always better than the first; you know
exactly what you want to bring, and you
know exactly where to sit - far away from
the anthills and tick weeds and other
insect-infested stumps and ditches and trees.
You pick a new tablecloth (a cleaner one, too).
You bring more food. More drinks. You
wear ideal picnic clothes. Not the jeans and
jacket you trotted along in when you last
improvised your first picnic with a
bag of popcorn, two candy bars, and
bottles of water. Now there's sugar and
salt and sweet and savory all at once,
the classics of sticky peanut butter and
too much mayonnaise, the perfectly spicy
salsa to go with your tortilla chips, and a
cake made from a recipe written by your
good old parent or guardian. What doesn't
change, however, is the company. And for us,
it's still all about the weathered skin against
weathered skin, the toes intertwining among
dry, dry grass, and the consistent reminder that
we can do this as many times as we want and
be happier every single time.