DRY CRIK Journal

I will be reading to the future, assorted
children at Lincoln School where I rode my bike
half-mile down Spruce to Palm Drive,

where the high school kids parked at night
either side of the Pogue house – dodging potholes
into town and past the hospital – all closed down.

Fifty years ago I learned to pledge Allegiance,
say the Lord’s Prayer, pick which version
to contemplate, ‘debtors’ or ‘trespassers’,

for many years after, but I kept my head bent.
Pat still remembers me as an incorrigible,
busy kid on the playground. No old, dead horse

poems, I’ve found my mother’s ‘Aesop
for Children’ and remember the Milo Winter
illustrations I searched hours in pastel detail –

the mouse gnawing the lion’s rope, the gnat
and the bull – still digesting: the smaller
the mind the greater the conceit.