Friday, May 15, 2009

city boy

the sheriffs clop by
on horseback and i can't picture you here -
not in the back of the truck
we are driving, or
standing in the fair
watching livestock. you'd
be more horrified by
the horse shit clinging to your boots.
country as you are,
you grew up too much
of a city boy.
no one had you weeding
the gardens,
shucking bushels of corn
in a front porch rocker,
snapping ends off the beans.

that was my life, and it
wasn't even our farm, but the
neighbors' grandparents, who
recruited our wild child energy
and took us home
bursting with vegetables, not
that any of this matters

although i still can't see you
among the 4-H and canning prizes.
when we took in the fair,
you briefly paused for sticky sugar
spun into a cloud
and then we whirled upside-down
for hours, held by
metal bars
and gravity,
shrieking wildly into the night.