BETTER NOT

Better not return to the old ways when we knew where we and others we met grew up by their pronounced or swallowed vowels, consonants, making them buzz, burr, brighten or zip our ears with a clang, or their manners, a certain hand gesture older than Alexander the Great and most of all the shoes, those old gossips.

At the grill bar by the train-station we laughed at the robust ugly shoes of the Americans yet gave them beer so they would talk to us: English, the gate and the port to out and away. At night we drove to the local airport and sat in the empty bleachers and waved at the planes, dreaming of America, large brown paper bags filled with food we saw and smelled in the movies.

Coming home, the sad drinking man had tripped on our doorstep again, was bloody and weeping. Better not feel again stones so old they grow like cold skin. Trees wrapped in furs. Clouds kissing windows and smoking on balconies. Copper roofs climbing slowly toward heaven. Grass locked under leaves, a hidden fugitive. Oh, City of Youth —in my mind you hold me still.

TRAMPOLINE POETRY Issue #25.6