in big prairie

do you remember the pulsing fuzzy

little aphids, the “snow-covered”

beech branches—gusting air to watch

the sea-saw sway of tail-ends

wiggling

or standing in the triangle of light (that hits the

center of your parent’s kitchen floor at 5:42 in

July) where we returned to the business of

disco?

I admit it. I rummaged through your childhood

collection of arrowheads, animal-skulls and soft

prismatic pink quartz.  that afternoon you returned

to your teenage-era punk-rock Christian love songs

while bats snaked and swooped, sketching wrinkles in

the pond

we dipped into after we settled on that rectangular

rock where you held my purple-mulberry-stained feet

remarking about my little

toe