Platte 1950

Here: a take-apart moment—
I slow down, relish each drift of memory, still alive, this
Past. I sit in my cowgirl shirt, pearly snaps catching a glint of sun.
I am almost four years old,
My hair is curly, and although the picture,
With its ruffled edges, is
Black and white, anyone looking back in time can see
That the sky is blue in an early prairie spring.

I sit on a thick tree trunk, cast at some point
After a storm, probably, uprooted from its
Mooring in the bank of the river,
And turned by wind or the push and tear of water,
Laid on a horizontal line to earth, an end just over the river,
The Platte, and so I sit, my small body straddling
The thick-laid slabs of bark,

Tossing back a glance at my handsome dad, his blonde hair
Lifting slightly in the breeze, and wearing his own cowboy shirt,
A yoke of tan over red plaid,
He smiles back at me.

The picture opens long-closed doors,
And the rest of that day begins to appear, settling around me
As the memory blooms:
A cloth imprinted with fading yellow and blue flowers,
Spread on grassy tufts a step or two away from the
River; my mother in peddle-pushers, smoking
And gazing fondly, detached,
At my brother, my Johnny, just walking;
He picks up miniscule buds and tiny cones,
Tastes skeptically and looks up at our mother
With his round brown eyes, and
She laughs, indulgent, brushes the bits
From his mouth. The picnic hamper has
Fruit; she butters home-made bread
And sprinkles it with sugar.

And that’s all.
It’s just as real, more than
Half a century gone. There were smiles,
A splash in the river, pretend games, parents
Vibrant in the moment, laughing,
Smoke lazing up through Russian olive trees,
Cottonwoods rustling, Johnny, my dad, and Mama,
And I am always and still there,
Still alive in this past.

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