The Owners Of Granada Street

Willcox, Arizona

The Late 1950s

Good friends, mostly boys, 

a few girls, but we all owned it.

No one fought over it.

It was our refuge from the eruptions

of domestic authority.

Baseball, softball, football,

tricycles, and bicycles,

roller skates with metal wheels 

(remember the key), and hide and seek.

Summer nights, sitting under the corner street light,

swarmed by flying insects, watching bats 

and the occasional owl; 

from boisterous to subdued,

it seemed to us like a pretty good world.

During our street games, 

we stepped aside for the few cars to pass.

The drivers knew us well.

The Baptist pastor and his blue-haired wife scowled,

but everyone else had friendly smiles and a wave.

Once in a while a neighbor

would stop and bat a few balls to us.

I have never forgotten their smiles,

looking like they were twelve again.

From: Small Places, Big Places, Everywhere

Unpub. MS p. 41

I'll Remember This Much

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