for P.W.
#1950s #bluerinse #boyhood #growingup #hair #hairdresser #kansas #memories #midwest #mother #nostalgia #wichita
Sunny jaunts, now-and-again treats, with cousins, siblings; and parents along but somehow invisible.
Days and nights of pines and stars. Of blue bays, white schooners, top-down
I’m glad for mine. The long, aquiline form of it. The way it has shaped, informed my face;
A frosted cake layered with cars and people, rosetted with gulls, points out toward quiet afternoon islands.
Once cloud-high mountains, shaped and worn from hundreds of millions of rainfalls, windfalls, frosts. Rounded now
After you uncork him and he appears in a serpentine of white smoke. Before he grants you
The limpa from Scandinavia. The ciabatta, and the michetta from Italia, also known as Rosetta. The mantou from China.
The courtly old lady, widowed for decades, and her calico cat, who take each afternoon sun
You, Picasso aigu in your summer straw shading blue eyes and sailor stripes, juggling a bubble of cold wine.
Blonde head under baobab. Sun under shade. You sit on an African day,
At precisely 9.25. When the moon, the first and most abundant one of the new year,
Burnished at first, then blemished— an earthly foreshadowing. Then bearded for a while.
Quite a sight to behold: a woman of sun, reclining on the grass, in a meadow, abundantly recumbent, hair and limbs lush with heat
Those many, sung and unsung, who gave themselves, often gave up their lives, to fight, in wars,
Remember that one day you, too, will die. Will cease being here, in body, in breath. Will join all those