Prickly Pear

The Strawberry moon found me 

wandering beyond the porch light.

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 days, innocence felt like defiance.

The world 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 itself into everything it touches.

You don't feel the sting 

until a 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.

A Nice Young Man

I guessed right off by the fanciful demeanor
and baroque, manicured appearance.

Barbra Streisand albums displayed in the parlor
were a giveaway.

He taught special-needs children.

  

His mother left him the estate,

and he turned it into a bed-and-breakfast.

I know men like him 

who fled to the city in their youth, 

liberating themselves from the stranglehold 

of rural intolerance.

Yet here he was:

        fledgling entrepreneur,

        hospice volunteer, 

        director of the Presbyterian choir,

        as rooted in the red soil

        as the cottonwood tree that shaded 

        my bedroom window.

I wanted to ask why 

a handsome gentleman living alone 

in the dust bowl of America
had not turned his heels 

seeking companionship.

Then he produced a photograph 

of his daughter and grandchild.

"The blessed outcome," he declared,
"of an awkward high school affair.

Don’t the Lord fashion fortune from our folly?"

He excused himself for the evening.

I lingered on the stairwell, 

straightened a crooked picture,

signed the guestbook inscribed

with a verse from the Book of Psalms:

        "I praise you because I am fearfully
        and wonderfully made;     
        marvelous are your works, 
        my soul knows it well." 

In the morning, 

he set a table of fresh berries and scones, 

poached eggs, 

coffee,
crème brûlée 

in homemade raspberry sauce.

Our grandmother, 

for whom we traveled many miles 

to celebrate a birthday,
remarked that our host reminded her 

of the nice young man who designed

her living room remodel.

"You're thinking of Cousin Jerry,"
her sister replied.  

"Such a charming boy he was.

Shame he never married."

**First published in Hole In The Head Review