Opening Night

Perseid meteor shower

Opening night!

It’s opening niiiiight!

Well, almost

It’s also closing night 

Four weeks of rehearsal

Dancers drilled

Notes pounded 

Lights programmed

Sets built

Programs designed

Characters hones 

For one night of show

It’s also the end of the summer

Almost time to leave this happy place

My fifth summer in six years

Second working on the musicals

My “Buck’s Rock babies” 

As I call “my” kids

Over the years

I’ve watched them grow

Turn from awkward unsure ducklings

Into confident swans who know that

At least, if only here, 

In the middle of the Connecticut woods

They have a home

Where they are accepted for who they are 

Where they can express their creative selves

Freely and safely

Without ridicule 

My first summer

I looked at the long-time returners 

And shook my head

How could they keep coming back

Year after year?

Set up their lives around 8 weeks of summer camp?

But I too have kept returning

The one year I didn’t, a 

Miserable cold wet Sydney winter

I pined for my American Brigadoon 

And I returned

And fell in love all over again

With the place

With the people 

With my role in this community of artists 

Walking home from a late night tech

Beneath open night skies

Falling stars

And a maze of meteors

Whose lines are only sometimes visible 

I am home.