Life’s Little Misdirections 🥀🦋

Friends We Miss When We Grow Old

Old Neighborhood

A thousand warm guitars hummed in unison
below the vibrato windows
-- single-pain, pitchy harmony --
along a complex building in crumble tar lot
near the baleful, empty field, never harvested,
usefully absorbing a vision of acoustic melody of summer,
low rising beyond morning
to a dry day --

we could walk away from
the private homes, to the bottom of a sack,
find our favorite lone tree at the end of the world,
sheltering the ravine with a thick-slow creek eking
a narrowing runoff --
puddling sog-roots of cattails that whistled
while looking the other way, hiding a blend
of amphibians and blades of grass so sharp --
one sliced my index finger,
and I learned the meaning of 'coagulation',
the summer when we cared to ride bikes
with gears that stuck and greasy chains slipping
like lassos that couldn’t find the heads of steer.

A last summer to inhale garlic chips, chocolate bars
and orange soda from spare change stolen.
The last summer I'd remark about clouds
that didn’t insist on me knowing they exist.
The only time that maple would be small enough
to roost unyielding, everlasting torsos. 
I hadn’t taken a bath in a week or had yet
smelled strawberry scented shampoo on Sherrie’s hair.

She was a handful who you didn’t like,

especially after my dad’s hand-me-down Pontiac.
We all sat on the hood with stolen beer and stared
at a sunset and arriving stars.
You quietly walked home and I couldn’t be more pleased.
Except now,
when I stare at a leafless tree they’ll cut down tomorrow,
among other 'improvements' to come
in our old neighborhood.



Ha! 38 lines,
freeverse, take that!

6.12.21
Poetic fiction echoing sentiments of friendships lost long ago..

Want to get rid of one of the two 'of' used in line six...maybe, later.