Southern Idaho Summer

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I was six. 
I wheeled Grandpa’s milk cans out 
to wait like patient soldiers for the cheese truck. 
I strutted in a new red and blue 
corduroy cowboy suit. 

(Korea was over.) 

I raided raspberries, 
squishing succulence on my tongue. 
I slaughtered alfalfa-straw snakes in overgrown fields. 
I rode stick horses at full gallop 
across the log bridge, risking tumbles 
into nettles and polliwog-slime. 

(Viet Nam was yet to begin.) 

I fished for six-inch whoppers. 
I slept-out on rusty springs, 
waking when a 1940s Ford or Chevy 
or Nash crunched the gravelled road. 
I stared at stars, not yet myopic enough 
to need glasses. 

(Sputnik was an engineer’s conception.) 

I rode with Grandpa to deliver eggs, 
flats of eggs on the back seat, 
warm-stuffy, gray seat-pile in front, 
a green translucent spinner on the steering wheel. 
Four hours to Burley and back — 
a ninety-mile trip. 

(The moon rose untouched.)