youth
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The daughter of close friends looks at my son like that they have known each other since first grade – a time when looking at each other like that would have been unthinkable; icky, gross…dis-GUS-ting! Now she looks at him like that When I first noticed her looking his obliviousness was a comfort but now Read more
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When I was a kid we planted trees by the lake 72 pine seedlings hauled north in milk cartons arranged on the back floor of a ’39 Dodge the trees and I were small, green, pliable in need of nurturing the Dodge sits now in a junkyard, the remaining pines scrape the sky I remember Read more
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We kept colorful marbles in old Mason Jars, pilfered with Grandma’s blessing rabbit’s feet and other youthful treasures smelled like Grandpa’s Dutch Masters under that cool flip-top lid Our baseball cards were safe beneath our beds, in rubber- band locked P.F. Flyer boxes our glass and cardboard personal Fort Knoxes Read more
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My mom found the dead chipmunk I had brought home from the lake. It was the end of the summer I was ten; the stripe-tailed rodent had come home at peace in a blue and black JC Penney shoebox I said contained ‘stuff.’ He sure looked stuffed. A car – or maybe Ivar’s Jeep – Read more
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The embers of the campfire glow, fade with the vagaries of the waning lake breeze brilliant orange, gray, orange, silver, orange reminding me of 1969; flashing, broken neon small, single level roadside motels on old black-and-white signed U.S. highways frequented by people like those in my parents blue Plymouth Fury; mom and dad up front, Read more
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I was a good friend of her brother – he knows, but has never said a word On the rare occasions we still meet he smiles a knowledgable, unbelieving, remembering grin and I always wonder, after all of the years that have passed, just how much she has told him… or if he figured it Read more
Ponderable polemics, poetic 