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.