ludicrous and lime she's bought my wine
then usher on the farm or circus daemon
was house carrying a whim to heart
where climes are thought that fighting down the hatch  
where rumors are frothy in those diamonds caught
wish only tout cookie once thunder crash has melted speed
but any counters that claim violence is deniable here
and viable to an Osborne scene but wading in traffic
as a country lane shade its spree and what lies in air was a roadside
fair in bloom on Sunday afternoons in Tamaqua boon pillared spoon

I watched a movie last night
toward the end saw a couple on a boat
rowing toward the western golden light
then the clear Aegean
floated me into a cove in my brain
where mystery and emerald waters
became plain.

My memory organizes my life
by place.

The brownish sandy beach
where I whittled driftwood with my first Case knife.
The oleanders near the cyclone fence,
climbing the wiry fence tops chasing my friend Vince
who cursed those wires that caught his *******.
The river running through Tamaqua
on a family trip east as a kid
but I can’t see the faces or hear the names
of my New Jersey kin
I do see the wood box where me and my cousins hid.
Gone are the faint glimmers of folks
beyond the red-blooming poisonous bush
the names of aunts back east I wrote juvenile letters to
but I recall their ice cream parlor wall painted bright blue.

Closing my eyes
I see the yellow floor
and the bent aluminum legs of the kitchen table
I wiggled under as fast as I was able
to avoid Daddy’s long brown leather belt
and when he missed I heard his anger melt
when he couldn’t suppress a giggle.

Ah! the joy of my lively geographic memory.