For Ten Cents - March 23, 2024

steal my wax lips or fireballs

take the Hershey bars or Necco

wafers   just send me back

to the path that took me there

July 1960   the lake cottage    barefoot

on the way to the store    my hot-day

shortcut on damp earth and dead leaves  

through a carpet of ferns dotted with

orange toadstools and moss-slick stones  

as squirrels scratched acorns into the ground

or chased each other in spirals up trees

whose leaves played with the sun on my eyes

where for a moment I was bodiless with the

hidden birds   floated like a wish on a breeze

it was the first time that silence called

and nothing came from my lips

a moment of timeless bliss

now the occasional magic trick

performed in the dim light

of memory

and each time the curtain

falls    it feels like I’m sitting

farther and farther away