Dandelion
Here, you say, take it
even as the wind
whirls it away
I clench my fingers closed
roll the dandelion in
and hold you here
forever
Mama, you say
I open my fingers
roll them out
toward you
and we watch the dandelion
whisper away
You place your hand in mine
your monkey grin your lion mane
flying in the wind
A fistful of love
here in my hand
enough for a lifetime
here in the palm of my hand
Watermelon
Old ornery , we call her,
crazy, possessed,
wild orange hair and wandering eye
Lives in the old wood shack, we guess
she must’ve been there
forever
We play who could look the longest
without blinking,
coming home from school
most days I wind up flinching
and Warren wins
always
But today I fall on the pavement
scrape my knee,
Hurry! Get home! Hurry!
salty tears, muddy hands, scared skinny me
hobbling past her shack
hurriedly
But wait! She’s waving now,
evil eye glowing, frank and knowing
Boy, where you going with that knee?
I want to hide as she beckons me inside
feel fear growing but her eye don’t move
away
Mothball house, bandaged knee and
not a word spoken. She cuts watermelon
into small triangles and does not scold me
when the juice drips past my elbows , down, down,
pooling on her polished wooden table,
not once
Growing Up
Eat the whole apple
to the core
even past it,
seeds and all…
You’ll live forever, said Grandpa Ben
And I believed him when
I was ten
He was living proof --
ate his apples to the core
and died when he was
onehundredandfour
I recall a lifetime of useful truths
like
chocolate is great but sex is better
Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain will change your life
and
Your girl is always the best
So we ate our apples with great care,
my brother and me. But last year
he died at thirty-three, a bitter rotten
thing to swallow. And I wonder:
Grandpa maybe was a liar
after all
But I pour a whisky for my girl and me
on a midnight porch with nothing but fireflies
and the mournful meanderings of Miles
Davis. And I know now, Grandpa Ben
didn’t lie, he just got the one
about apples wrong.
