it happened in the last century
when we were growing up together
there was always something going on
like getting a thousand splinters in my foot
trying to scale a rough wooden fence in long ago
may think this is absurd or the night
of the bright red asterisks and the sky a flood
of unconscious regrets bursting over the small
town lake called silver and encrustations of
fake jewelry the broad paved way with its
shops and hardware and grain-feed stores
a silo standing erect on a frozen field
waiting for the may-flies to wake up again
the agate and emerald rings you buy
in the five-and-dime joints and give away
to the next girl-friend or later almost
the time the year wouldn’t turn around
trudging up the path to the big Mansion
with its pilot lights scrub oaks and pines
what was it that fretted so the ingles or
the language of disentanglement a myth of photos
broken reeds a cracked vase with paper flowers
a telephone call at the wrong hour soon it would be
mid-century pink shirts and striped ties
in the drug store with warnings about the future
lesions and bible strokes and pinball machines
the pool hall with its cigarette cadavers or
the highway that only exists on radios with loud
music big as clouds engaging the colors
of the backyard at night when the blooms
porphyry and jade learning to shine when least
expected the graduation insomnia and petrified
words that wouldn’t come out a gift to be
proper and solemn head askew for the month
and rolling on lawns saturated with vodka
OK the few that survived the wreck and
the songs and polka dirges the heat especially
it would not be anything but sound
accolades in a new version of Latin the prophets
declaiming in front of the civil war cannon
and the hoosegow with its darkness a secret
whose identity could not be revealed and
so on to the next fold the minute beings
eyes and ears and the soiled pockets
money meant nothing it was all about
poetry and beauty and the large skies
that a trained eye could discern no matter
what ! when we all scattered the accident
it was because the tires couldn’t stop
no one heard the rain expect for the leaves
tingling with a memory of speech

05-15-21