I remember the white house
on Fourth Street with its fan window
in front of the garage and the boy
who got run over by the dump truck
backing into his bike—my first
taste of death. Kindergarten was
colored blocks and songs, the back
yard a playground with kites
and wings and fluorescent balls.
So much I carry in my head
that has no place to go: all dressed
for memory and maybe poems
but not transportable. It all goes
into the urn with the stiff body
that will burnish to ash.
Somehow Fourth Street must
reminisce about how we played
kick-ball and went to school
and became adults and moved away.
No one who lives there now
knows how the wind
used to blow and summers
in our broken homes
were a dance with stars.
