I remember eating hot dogs and baked beans and how the paper plates would turn gray where the baked bean juice soaked through. I remember watching the Beatles on TV for the first time, in black and white, on the Ed Sullivan Show. My friend was already a drummer and my dad had said, “Those guys need haircuts.” I didn’t feel that way then.
I remember the feeble attempts at a volleyball game in the backyard. The ball would volley once or twice over the net then go skidding sideways off the hand of someone’s big sister. Then one of us would have to pick carefully through the poison ivy to retrieve it from the woods.
I remember the dogs, of course. The Collies with their dense fur pack and long pointed noses like camp saws.
And I remember sitting on the edge of the picnic bench at the end of the night, next to my mom, pinching and flopping the loose skin on the backside of her arm while she talked. It reminded me of turkey skin and I called it her gobbler.
-(taken from Driving Home)
The moon is big
round and full
and swims backstroke
among the stars
-(from Driving Home)
Travelling with Willy!