Somehow I Remember

Though more than a little battered,
somehow I remember:

a mountain in Sweden that glowed with damp green moss,

the pigeons that cooed and scratched gratingly outside the used book-store of a learned friend,

a possum that stared at my flash-light with huge primal eyes that seemed to under-cut all the world's sky-scrapers,

the crisp green apple in the school-day lunches my father would pack as he listened to the morning news,

a black girl's sparkling brown eyes
and that voice that revived me like a sweet tropic wind,

the boy in my sixth grade class who would never give me the piece of paper I'd forgotten
(boy, I hated him)

the sword-fish steak I pitied the day I broke six years of vegetarianism,

the gentle call of the robins I murdered with a pellet gun,

the calm thrill of swerving precisely to miss a drunk driver,

a deer that grazed on a small southern Oregon island,

listening to Full Moon Fever as my Mom drove along the marvelous coast
(I was 12 and joyful)

cheese, onion and mushroom pie.