Tree and Grass
As grass is flexible, a tree is tough: thus each endures a normal season’s wind. Another year, when one gale’s cruel enough to fell a forest, lowly grasses bend; tall, stubborn trees throb in magnificence and fight, but fail. Stumps watch the grass spring back and envy the benign resilience they know, with all their might, they sorely lack. I couldn’t help but try to reach the sky where you, my angel, lived. I loved your breeze, and shimmering in it, but was malcontent with being walked upon like grass. So I resisted and reached higher, and was rent, just as a wicked wind...
Read MoreDear Memory II
December snow, an unattended wedding— bridge, siphon for what no longer pertained, sound of lumbering cumulus, sludge hugging ditches, on a walk to a hidden bistro. Pockets flush with crumpled cigarettes, an old cell phone—your kiss lingered in my mind, enticing me over a long weekend to be redeemed. Song echoed in my bones— bad news, albatross, melody burning my throat, but I assented to the torment. Until you left for school— sleeping late, mimicking unwavering pines, hushed moon, your voice the music in my dream, I awoke to a knock, almost thinking I’d open the door, before I...
Read MoreIn Love
I’m in love, love, love with Patty-Penny-Cindy-Linda-Brenda before I know what love is. She is cuter than all the other girl sin Mrs. Mendenhall’s class and worth all of Uncle Dale’s teasing; pinker than Bazooka Bubble Gum at the candy store across from Wiggins Street School; sweeter than Saturday mornings, cartoons and Froot Loops with six extra teaspoons of sugar; yum, yum, yummier than homemade ice cream churned by uncles after bailing hay on the hottest day of July; more real than a bloody nose on the school bus, my first cigarette in the woods; more thrilling than coasting my bike...
Read MoreOnly You Could Catch Me
Only you could catch me. Auntie, this is your memory, But I’ll gladly abduct it, or Let’s say, better yet, whoever Lives longer absconds with it and Is required to tend the recollection: You, just fourteen at the bottom Of steep, basement stairs And me, just four at the top, I seized the chance of flight, Flung my little body at you, And you had no choice but to catch me. It was a good thing you were looking, But I knew only faith, not doubt. Only you could catch me. Still a child trapped like me, We recognized our comradery. Mom shrieked and swore; We escaped; we were free. Only you...
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