Prickly Pear

The Strawberry moon found me tonight

drifting through the shadows.

The moon held court over mischievous stars

dancing in silver pirouettes

along the crests of the clouds.

I recalled the two of us

that summer evening in '92

lying naked in the tall grass, laughing,

tangled in knots.

You were eighteen.

I was twenty-two.

Your college acceptance letter

perched like a winning lottery ticket

on my dashboard.

We celebrated your escape

with a bottle of gas-station champagne.

I danced around you int he hot moonlight.

You worried we would be seen.

Those were days of innocence and defiance.

The word was remaking itself again:

        old empires loosened their grip,

        a new South Africa stepped into the sunlight,

        Soviet flags folded half a world away.

        Back home, the streets of Los Angelese

        burned for Rodney King.

We watched it idly on the television

and felts its echo

in the small revolutions of a kiss,

your laughter on my chest,

the sweet audacity of being young.

History turned outside our orbit,

and we barely noticed,

believing our turning was the center of it all.

We did not understand

that time steps through the tall grass

without looking down,

pressing its mark into everything it touches.

Youth is a clean wound.

You don't feel the sting until 

something buried surfaces,

the barb works its way

back through the skin.

I smiled thinking of this

and stepped into the prickly pear,

cutting myself

on the memory of you.