tuesday, i tried to put into words...

How Strange, Innocence

Unbearable nostalgia tonight.

In the countryside scenery on the long drive home,

Soft rises and falls of hills and fields with hay bales wound tight

the most memorable iowa landscape

always has been the skies that swallow everything in one breath

that blush with every imaginable color in one sunset,

that stretch summer nights so wide

the canvas shares the sun, the moon, the stars.


Tonight, the linear line of time cracked

In the rustled leaves, the chorus of bugs and birds

As grandma unfolded rusty metal chairs

and arranged them in a semicircle.

We soaked in the evening breezes of summer,

Watching the cat chase a mouse between cars,

We laughed about the mistakes of early motherhood,

The silly injuries procured in our childhoods,

The fraility of age, with reminders typed on typewriters, taped to generators

In case the day comes where she has to do it alone.


Tonight my grandmother, life rosy in her cheeks,

Got to laughing so hard she couldn’t finish her story

And in her shinning eyes I saw a giddy school girl,

A teenager in love, a twenty-something on her wedding day,

A glimpse of what she’s made of, behind a limp and bowed shoulders

- the realization: her heart has never aged a day.


My childhood summers were wrapped around these scenes

In this yard, with cups of cold water, tangled hair stuck to damp foreheads

Fingertips stained purple from the blackberries, bug bites itched raw,

A blissful unawareness of anything other than the present moment

Constant awe and fascination only children can have

Outside the confines of formality, simple honest curiosity

The adults rewriting the history beneath the setting sun,

The cousins playing cops and robbers until the night draws its heavy curtain


Tonight as I passed the airport, the last embers cooling in the sky

I watched planes take off, my heart raw to every movement

Suddenly exhausted with the notion that I had done it:

I’d gone back in time. For one last night, for a few graceful seconds

I was 5, 8, 10, 15, simultaneously. My spirit uninhibited,

my emotions epic and heartbreaking

I know now, there’s no stopping growing up.

But this all will become a part of me. (I will carry this with me).