Before Facebook

Before Facebook.

Oh to be back on the corner of W. Hilliard or riding through the streets,
Chasing each other like fugitives, a Wild Goose Chase:
Who’s side are you on anyway? I’m going to hide at the school…
My spot is at the top ‘cuz it my yard and my tree.
Branches worn from use and overuse by nimble fingers
Calloused by daily climbs and wear: a symbiotic nature with tree,
And with life.
Cars without license plates, binoculars and spies like us;
Muddy banks of the creek and soaked pant legs
(Did you know what was the only time I ever got grounded?)
and wild onions
that make magic potion if you smash them in the rocks right…
Grown-up thoughts have no place in the Karate Room: Hii-ya!
Your drew blood on me once, we were angry.
Skinned my nose: you were so proud…
I might have been bigger but I never looked down on you, not once.
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Does the monitor’s white glare cut into the rooms’ Buddha nature?
Mu.
Overpowering, false vibrations of man-made electronics.
My eyes are puffy and my fingers ache from an all-nighter
And my thoughts are of a childhood friend.
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That rope must be a hundred feet long!
How did you dad build that tree-house way up there?
Can Eric come out and play?
Nintendo, Zelda and Mario, Zack, Eric and Peter.
“You like Michelle, don’t you?!? GROSS!
Zack and Michelle sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”
She never got to know about the computer upstairs.
Or the super ball on a string for a practical reason,
that baffled my sensibilities.
Dot-matrix screens and flat plane shoot’em up games.
You always won anyway.
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Sometimes I wonder what you are up to these days.
I almost stopped by the house last time I was in Eugene.
But you probably don’t live there anymore
Besides
The gravel road where we used to harvest ice crystals has been paved over
and someone cut the first twenty feet of branches off the old climbing tree.
And now it’s a new millennium and Pokémon wins with round.
But I’ll see you again, sometime.
Spring 1999