About 1962
Willcox, Arizona
Let’s not think about where
our old neighborhood went.
The street names have remained,
but searching will not find much of
anything removed. It just looks different.
Remember how we played basketball
in December’s chill and frost,
fingers becoming stiff and red,
and how the O’Connor’s blood hounds
chased the ball until one of them
bit a hole in it?
In spring, when all flowers blossomed,
the land seemed merciful and soft.
Then summer, with a few days too warm,
displayed new mirages in the distance,
silvery and ghostly and mysterious.
We rode our bikes out toward them
but soon realized we weren’t
getting any closer.
I remember especially the autumn
of my eighth grade, when boys and girls,
shimmering in fall colors and full blush,
noticed each other differently,
gradually becoming aware
of our awkward civilities,
of boys’ cracking voices, that whatever began
blossoming the previous summer
made us fidgety and confused,
having no idea what was really happening.
In the tenth grade I realized what had
really happened, and that memory
has tickled me ever since.
From: Memories Of Things
Left Behind
Unpub. MS p. 46
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