My Childhood Calls Me

By Mary L. Bradford

Morning glories thread

Across a weed-baked field

Swords of june grass

Guard alfalfa barricades

String bean summers

tart with green plums

lemony apricots. …

I float handmade ships

of fragile berry boxes

Collect glossy heroines

In stacks of paper dreams

Set up baseball diamonds

marked by rotten apples

slippery, pungent. …

Walking home from school

Abreast with laughing cousins

Refusing, always refusing

Rides with strangers

I chin a haunted bar until

a twanging harpie

chases me away. …

Holding to my heart

Deep library treasures

I sit at cottonwood time

Smelling leathery pages

I can smell them now

O girl of the limberlost

and lonesome pine. …

My cherry-tree world

Cradled me, I

Tarzana of the Apes,

I, overseer of vacant lots,

sidewalk sprees,

dusty roads,

and RunSheepyRun.