In my dream,
I was accosted by sugar ants
in the sandbox,
near the honeysuckle
and curled parsley
behind the house.
I was trying to eat the little ants
but was called in
for cheese and baloney.
When I came in,
hopping in worn-out slippers,
the glass door slid into the kitchen
with plasterboard walls
and beige ceramic tile.
There was a black spider
perched on the ceiling
with bright yellow knees.
Those years ago
I drew with sidewalk chalk,
made myself mazes
on the sloping driveway
too steep for basketball.
Cicadas dragged in heat
on waves, droning.
One landed on me -
a yell caught in my throat -
but I made myself look at it
and be still, shaking.
Back then I had an old cape
& a homemade bow-and-arrow.
I’d sally forth
into the backyard, barefoot,
jumping over prickly mulch,
brushing my shins
against clouds of low love-in-a-mist
with its threaded leaves
& shy blue-white flowers.
Sometimes my sister
was back there too, tanning,
or Mom carving
little men out of cherry,
but more often I was all alone
in that wilderness
in moccasins & living
off wood sorrel,
the brighter clover, lemony.
Or in rain
I listened to my brother
play piano if he was home,
maybe Bags and Trane,
and I’d dance between shadows,
the underworld of the patches
of carpet in the light.
Later - a little older -
I recognized that home
is more a time than a place,
and understood I would miss it
years before it was gone
so around nine years old
I went through every foot
of that high-ceilinged house,
that weedy backyard,
and made a solemn farewell
to everything in advance
trying hard to be ready
long before the time came to leave.
