To everyone today, thanks for the memories.
Thank you, oh town fathers, thank you Chamber of Commerce,
for the freshly minted gimmick
of the Rebel re-enactor
nursing a Big Gulp, who refreshed our understanding
of what it was like to sit around
on itchy cheeks and wait
for the Yanks to come. Thank you, Garden Club
biddy who clutched a wrinkled script
and told us everything
we never wanted to know about the hideous furniture
in the antebellum home
of General A.P. Hill.
Muchas gracias, April grass, for remembering to be green,
a Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,
He-has-risen green,
green of Augusta fairways, of deep center field.
High-five, dogwood trees
for remembering to blossom
into softness, thanks for sending pink parachutes
to subjugate the lawn,
big thank you, common sense
for keeping me from Mary’s grave, I would have only stared
like a netted cod,
and from her small white house
with its shiny new
aluminum siding like
fresh bandages, a shout-out and a huge “I’m sorry” to
the artist from Peru,
all of twenty-one,
you have miles to go, señor, and so bemoaned the closing
of your tiny gallery
with calm. You said your chickens
were killed by two wild dogs, a tragedy you painted
in black-and-white acrylics,
the colors of the mutts,
who were “simply hungry.” The whole town was, I thought,
hungry for the past,
the present and the future
to reveal themselves before we go to bed
and close our eyes and in
the little winter of our slumbers,
slowly, thankfully, remember to forget.