nineteen sixty three

We lived in a house on the side of a hill.

Steep enough that the back yard was dug into it

with a high wall below the street.

Like a Mexican courtyard

with bougainvillea, a climbing rose so old and un-pruned

that half the branches were bare.

Mossy bricks, humped, tilted, settled, random

And a tiny lawn the size of a throw rug.

Too small to mow, one thrust and turn

and I'd be bumping my ass on the fence.

So I cut it with clippers and watered by hand.

One afternoon, watering and woolgathering

about god knows what,

a hummingbird darted into the mist above the spray

and hovered there, giving me the eye.

She turns her body just so;

in the finest droplets,

a luxurious opportunity for a bath on the wing.

Brazen little darling checking me out, like:

Don't stop now buddy, 'cause I'm digging this.

And so was I:

OK baby, take your time, long as you want.

A last peek over her shoulder, then she was gone.

Who was that? Tinkerbelle?

The fairy on Disney who hovers over the castle

waves her wand and the sparks shower down and the picture

changes to color and the chorus sings...

We didn't have a color tv in 'sixty three

we watched on the neighbors' across the street

I liked the one where fire burns a hole through a map

and we see the four horsemen of the Ponderosa

cantering through a meadow.

all the shows were big

only twelve channels on the dial

half the slots were empty.

it all seemed so special,

like the night we camped in a tent in the backyard

and waited to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still.

That's the one, the pacifist parable from the fifties,

when wars got hot and the nukes were hatching

and the witches were burning in Washington.

The show's about to start,

run, come on, get in here.

So I ran into the sliding glass door

and broke it, no safety glass in 'sixty three

I cut my leg below the knee.....badly.

Sixty three stitches and a smiley face scar

that grins on my shin to this day.

A week later we went to a lake in the mountains

but I couldn't go in the water,

too much risk of infection.

So we rowed a boat over water so clear that I could see

the trout and the beer cans fifty feet down.

Now I hear about turbidity, the lake is turning to jello

Transparency is getting rare anywhere you look.

Grandpa and grandma took me to see the relatives,

old cousins in Boston and Dallas

They had black servants who lived in a cottage behind the big house,

They served us biscuits and fried chicken for breakfast.

Dallas steams in August, anthills on the lawn,

the sand stuck together like little towers in the humidity.

At school that fall when the teacher said

that the president was dead, I felt nothing,

because he was just a face on the television

without a hat or a horse or a rocket

and nobody talked about who he was fucking,

at least not to me.

when they grabbed Oswald and I saw his sneering face,

I thought: I know that look,

I've seen that smirk in the mirror.

a week or so later we returned to regular programming,

robots and cowboys, cavemen and fairies.