Culling the attic
We’ve saved all this junk
because we might want it later.
You say:
At our age there is no later.
And so we begin.
At our age, love
needs no storage.
It’s the Summer of Love and your period is late
We are suburban college kids
bicycling with flowers in our hair
through Oregon to Frisco or bust.
We cruise Tillamook as if a different life,
tour the cheese factory, charmed by the town
with cows along the road
calm in their cuds.
Maybe it’s a message from the bovine but
your breasts, you say, are more tender now.
We are in love but not ready for the Big If.
Camping at Cape Lookout with hot showers,
toweling wet hair, you return grinning because
you are very not pregnant, you say.
End of an era, beginning of a period.
When finally we pedal into the Haight,
summer’s end, it’s a strung-out scene
selling no joy. Frisco’s a bust. You say
We lost something in that shower drain.
To the airport, eastward,
steam-heat classrooms for us.
Rain, fresh green grass for Tillamook.
Joe Cottonwood has repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest book of poetry is Random Saints.
We’ve saved all this junk
because we might want it later.
You say:
At our age there is no later.
And so we begin.
At our age, love
needs no storage.
It’s the Summer of Love and your period is late
We are suburban college kids
bicycling with flowers in our hair
through Oregon to Frisco or bust.
We cruise Tillamook as if a different life,
tour the cheese factory, charmed by the town
with cows along the road
calm in their cuds.
Maybe it’s a message from the bovine but
your breasts, you say, are more tender now.
We are in love but not ready for the Big If.
Camping at Cape Lookout with hot showers,
toweling wet hair, you return grinning because
you are very not pregnant, you say.
End of an era, beginning of a period.
When finally we pedal into the Haight,
summer’s end, it’s a strung-out scene
selling no joy. Frisco’s a bust. You say
We lost something in that shower drain.
To the airport, eastward,
steam-heat classrooms for us.
Rain, fresh green grass for Tillamook.
Joe Cottonwood has repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest book of poetry is Random Saints.