Wellington, Kansas 1961
Dark Cherokee eyes shine,
peering out at me from under
the uneven straw of your bangs.
Chopstick legs,
long like a crane’s
caught in motion
from running ragged circles
around your brothers.
A grape-stained smile
born of Indian summers
spent ruling wheatfields
and the Wellington pool
paints your popsicle face.
Your spirit captured in a snapshot.
3 ½ x 5 proof
of a different you.
A you before
a move across the wide wheatfields
of the West you owned
to a sweltering South you knew only
by the black ink on your birth certificate.
A you before
grandma left all the kids
in a cold house on the West End,
left you the cooker, the cleaner,
the mother.
A you before
you buried one brother
and two parents,
before middle age and menopause.
What I would give to befriend
that other you,
to dance inside
the jagged edged photograph
and kiss your popsicle face.
What I would give to run and slide
down the vydocks with you
on a piece of cheap cardboard,
your open faced smile,
the high wheat grass flying by
causing our legs to itch
and our hair to stick
together in tight tangles.
To have those chopstick legs
chase me through the
shotgun, A-frame house,
out to the tornado cellar
where we could hold hands
and hide, our whispered giggles
the only sounds to echo
off the dark, dusty walls.
To have those cardboard soled shoes
pedal me to the top of a gravel hill
on a second-hand bicycle
built for one, but made for more,
knees pushed up to my neck,
arms and elbows grasping for leverage
as we fly down like freight trains,
our voices caught in our throats.
To be your tree-climbing,
baby sitter firing conspirator
I would keep your secrets,
take your spankings,
share your laughter and your records.
I would give you the last burger
in the A&W sack
and splurge for the Dairy Queen
banana split you coveted.
Your 3 ½ x 5 spirit,
though captured in print,
still dances outside
the faded sepia snapshot.
It dances in the first
footsteps of my daughter.
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