Before bed my youngest asked me if I would tell her
a story from when I was a boy. I said, “Indeed:
“Along the streets in my neighborhood were trees
covered by a purple bark.”
My eldest asked how old was I. “Five,” I
said.
“A long ago the streets were lined with trees that
grew a purple bark. Those trees made me dizzy. I dared myself to touch a trunk with my tongue and I did. My nose so close to the purple—it smelled of hot asphalt. The streets in my neighborhood as yet
unpaved. Lickety-split the tree-sap stuck to my tongue. I dropped and uttered
the following poem:
Et wildflower root
to right a bad
phrase-chain ingestion.
Vomited dandy
patent leather.
“My sister carried a real lion on her bicycle handlebars
that she roared to get my parents’ attention.”
