(SOMEONE ONCE CALLED THIS) THE FOLLY OF YOUTH

(SOMEONE ONCE CALLED THIS) THE FOLLY OF YOUTH


I was once like you, once cracked back beer cold and jubilous,
said, I’ll stay here tonight. A mattress supported by cinder blocks.
I, too, said, hello socks in hammers. Rock chicks in tank tops. Skin, sweaty.

I’d fall sideways from a promise.

All night we kiss in graveyards. On a blanket. Tracing the outline of shoulders
like trading snapshots. You go first, then me. Say windows and trees all tilt
for us, say summer is how you wear it. Barefoot, a start.

Freighters groan and clack and this is their talk.
You can find a bed or a national forest. Or both. The best
places we find come with breakfast.

She once had braces and guitar lessons.

A hope again: a pickup and Pendleton blanket, moonset on
mesas, pumps push through midnight in Wyoming. Skies smell of sage,
axle grease, sulfur. We say double-dog dares cross and recross telephone lines.

Flip flops, cutt-offs river wet, tossed in back, and left. Driving in t-shirt,
you say, some things come with an orange sky. Lean forward lips.
Shoulders taste tremendous salt of summer.

The sage rolls out for us again.

You crash in a room with a mattress again. In the glory of going,
we forget to eat and take vodka on empty stomachs.
Say, this never happens. Not like this, not like this. Then it does.