Long Childhoodhouse Poems

My Boy / Bridgeport Ct 1981

The images plucked from a full soft drive like over blown berries
threatening to fall……blasted to the humus. Swing chains creak.
The high-backed, heart carved, chalk white, front porch swing sways;
to the kicking of your feet. Beside me, you sit in spankin’ new school clothes singing.

Together wrapped like pretzel dough, we warble, annoying the sparrows.
The bumble bee yellow and black stripped school bus is late.
The dreamy cottage bungalows’ screen porch perches like a tree house ledge
over the four story drop off. Hundred year old sentinel pines tower still above us, 
limbs house hug. The occasional cone drop ricochets down the trunk 
to a soft needle landing, and a bouncing roll before falling off the retaining wall

We own the world. King and Queen of the Mountain are we. I sing “Ducky Duddle” to you. 
You laugh. All the joy in the world in such a small sound. Oh, how I loved to make you happy.
Two short years before, even your name was new to you..my boy, Jamie.