A Glimpse of My Misspent Youth

Starting and rarely finishing

Everything from books to paintings

to still another year in art school

A pond was dug and when the water didn't come

the salamanders slipped away

Gardens grew over, sometimes with more weeds than

zucchini

which is hard to imagine for any serious gardener

Hearts were broken

not with malice

 Out of fear, perhaps, or carelessness

Clear lines hadn't been drawn

They were reckless times

When we couldn't have understood what harm

might come

Angst was the order of the day

prefaced with Ginsburg and Hesse and when we were feeling really crazy,

Franz Kafka and that wacky beetle thing! 

Forehead tapping in smoke filled rooms

Existential meant surviving  

with little more than

the change in my pockets.

And befriending the cab drivers who liked having the 

"Kid along for the ride"

I loved their stories

and I was killing time

with no place else to go.

Staying up all night at the 

Jersey Shore:

Timothy Leary and Baba Ram Das and "sensitivity sessions"

and I couldn't keep my eyes closed

when everyone said, "Ommm"

Instead, I  kept one eye on that last piece of chicken

in the KFC box.

Sleeping on the beach all day long

with the boardwalk throbbing in the background

to ZZ Topp and Doobie Brothers

An embroidered gauze blouse stuck to my skin

and I woke to the tide coming in

and washing away one of my huaraches.

Me and Mary Kay hitchhiked back to school with just two shoes between us.

dancing without having learned

On days worn dull,

it is in quiet rooms I remember

how I used to dance with second-hand tambourines

on flowery quilts

wearing a girl's slip of satin & lace.

Or was the one seen twirling

across summer lawns of public spaces,

as a brass band played through dusky evenings,

beneath gazebos—that from a distance

were re-imagined as musical carousels

capable of spinning up into the night sky,

to drift as singing satellites among the stars.

In a house where instruments were in need of repair—

the untuned violin, the upright without certain keys,

the stringless folk guitar of a long lost friend—

tucked forgotten in corners and cases,

eventually finding their fates

along with unloved books and toys

and outgrown dresses.

But the music was always there,

and remained,

dancing

without ever having learned.