Summer 1966: After France & Remembering Bobby,
Who One Day Would Learn to Multiply and Divide,
Write Love Poems, Define Home, Fight Unfairly and
Live with as Much Gusto as a 7-Year Old. Perhaps.
From left coast to right, or the wide arc between,
which place claimed you? In New York you marveled
at the building’s backs scratched by clouds, and all your
pale cousins in Baltimore spoke strangely and couldn’t fathom
your nuclear family’s private lingo, while the drive to Texas
and its red ants and iced tea blossomed into adventures between
pages in the back seat of the VW bug. By the second week you
learned that Texans sweat as much as the French, and swear even
more, that you couldn’t fight one twin without taking on the other,
sometimes both at once. There was no question of fairness then,
just brotherhood, but the librarian would slip you the choicest
donated fiction, and you played baseball every day in the vacant lot
until sundown called the players home to black and white body
counts and cigarette commercials on the three channels received.
Sometimes you lay in bed under the half-light of the whirring
fan blades, and dreamt of heroes and ornithopters, zebras
and the scent of chocolate chip cookies in the oven. Other nights
you wondered how words could rest so calmly on one page yet
explode off the next, or why a man would climb a tower in Austin
to kill fourteen people when opportunities for mayhem and murder
burgeoned across the sea. Wasn’t living a matter of simple
subtraction? One by one the days parted and you walked through
that dwindling heat, eyes squinting, questions in hand, emerging
fifty years later having suffered additions and division and the
cruelties of love and success, honor and truth, still asking why
and how, home or house, where it went, your shoulders slumping
under the heft of those beautiful, terrible summers stacked high
like so many life-gatherings of unread books awaiting a bonfire.
This was first published in theSilver Birch Press “Moving” series, and an earlier version titled “Bonjour, Texas” appeared on the blog A Holistic Journey.
O at the Edges 
Reblogged this on Crazy Pasta Child.
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Thanks for reblogging!
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I love this, and really identified with it (being a native Texan). The iced tea, whirring fans, the one librarian, and yep, the twins, ha ha. That amazing summer heat, loved it all! You are truly an extraordinary poet.
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Ah, childhood! And thanks for your kind words.
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I lived in Baltimore (Balmer) for a time. They do talk funny. Kind of like Philadelphians. Regional accents haven’t entirely disappeared yet, anyway.
And those questions of childhood just circle round and repeat with different names attached…(K)
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Yes, Balmer! That’s it. Ha!
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Aw! I can see Bobby in my mind’s eye. Great piece of autobiographical poetry.
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He was a goofy introverted kid. Hasn’t changed much. 😀
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Thank goodness!
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Question for you, Robert: How do you “decide” what form a poem takes? Just curious about your process.
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It varies. My “default” seems to be couplets, but with this particular piece, a dense block form seemed to fit the prose-ish feel. With other pieces, various factors come into play – the sound, line length, emphasis on lines or sections, or perhaps a shift in tone or focus. Mostly, the form grows and gains substance as the poem is written. I seldom know what form will take shape when I start a poem.
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In whatever form you write, it’s always poetry, Bob.
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Ah, Cate! You’re always so kind. Thank you.
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