PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

". . . to step barefoot into reality."

---Wallace Stevens, "Large Red Man Reading"

That afternoon, we returned to that bend in Verging Creek, "our place,"

just below and immediately south, of Verging Creek Pike Bridge,

just west of town, where the channel was narrowest and shallowest.

The untrimmed, unimpeded growth of trees, vines, and wildflowers,

on either sloping bank, formed a copse---provision of natural screening

against the perverse peerage of nosy, prejudiced prudes.

Shoeless, shirtless, long curls cascading around your face and down to

your bare shoulders, you stepped on to the large, flat rocks of the

creekbed, covered by just two inches of shimmering water that seemed to

swirl around your midnight blue socks, and the tattered cuffs of

your baggy, bell-bottom jeans---as the flow gurgled and chattered on its

casual flow across half the county, in tribute to the Great Eastward River:

its flow having merrily tasted and thrust itself around that aspect of

your beauty---as I would, later, in the back row of the drive in theater, in the

small compartment of our car, in the amber glow of our c.b.'s facial dial.

Starward

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