Chasing Memories
Bentley Avenue— the apartment house
where the white birch slumped
where we chased runaway clouds,
animal-shaped against blue-lit skies
past Chamberlain, Sofield, & Convery Street
past a gnarled old oak hiding angry beeshives
where we flapped makeshift wings
across the running creek
past Rustler & Anderson’s Grocery
past Hattie Mae’s who swore her mama
kept a duck in the bathtub
past my best friend Chrissie’s
where trails of pierogi hung mid-air
past neighborhood clothes hung to dry
on thirty foot lines where the wind
fluttered in shirt arms, flapped in pant legs,
billowed bed sheets into ghost-like
shadows I still chase like unsettled wind.
Fever Dream of No Regrets
If we are created in God’s image,
shaped in tall shadows of longing
like the Sassafras & Oak
as fleeting as the glistening
morning dew— then why
can’t we be as candescent
as summer peaches
painted in a still life?
~
When they ask you
what it was like
tell them—each morning
you climbed through
April’s window honeysuckled
in sweet nectar river & bathed
in butter-lit sun & not once
were you bridled
by the ambling elephant
of large regrets.
