Poetic License: ‘Riddles of the Past’
PHOTO PROVIDED
Joe Pacheco
(For Elizabeth S.)
Black and white and red all over
we lay on our backs in the gutter
with dead school buses
and old bowling balls, quacked up with ducks
flying upside down, kept closing the door
that was really a jar and fixed broken gorillas
with monkey wrenches.
You were only eight then; your longest word
a mile between each “s”, word play
was your brave new game. Now it is mine.
So before you turn gray with flies
like an elephant on a hang-glider,
fly south in winter to visit me —
it’s too far to walk.