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Summer of '64 |
A kid, sixteen. in the stifling
Houston suburbs
I rode the bike I got for
my eighth birthday
down Buffalo Bayou daily
just to escape
that "air-conditioned nightmare" –
Texas summer.
My eight-year-old Schwinn was bought
big on purpose
so I could grow into it
like the bluejeans,
sweaters, Great Books, my father's
act of faith and
an investment, as it happened,
justified, since
suicide was behind me.
I vomited
aspirin and lived again:
bad poetry
and unrequited love
mattered no more
than a white dust that clouded
and hid the path
beneath those balloon tires
and I pumped on
following slow brown water
to wilderness.
The summer after they killed
the President,
survivor's guilt hovered
over Texas
like low clouds hanging
so oppressive
always in palpable
humidity.
I burst through all that sadness
into the wild,
bouncing over gravel
coasting along
rolling banks where cuckoos
called from the scrub
tarantulas trudged along on
sandy shoulders
and horntoads lapped mosquitoes
from the wet air,
before the houses spread
and we were gone.
copyright 2012
lalo
kikiriki |
