Walk-Opened Memory

Say! Today we zipped on rain pants, left

home, tromped puddled potholes

through contractor rock -

Sugar, oh honey honey

golden hit from boombox

lifted above neighbor’s open gate

thank our walking pace not for long

thank memory for earworm words along

fence line until back-up beeper of yard waste truck

into the alley as we squeezed out –

that sideways scuttle

thank dwindling agility we can still

dance our shimmies out, eat any

food:

good cheese, red wine,

homemade pasta. We still get

metal mouth like over the bridge that

golden day we met friends in Home to

walk, golden day as Virginia said,

walk we took by Hood Canal

days when that was ordinary, Virginia

walking with us, dancing inside as we left her

street, her country garden blousy

beautiful as her smiling face.

Testify she taught us grace, faith in

some loveliness in commonplace. What

organ could replace her expansive heart?

Tell me your meal was marvelous. You not

dead inside us, not gone for red tulips,

not absent as your mother’s scarlet runner beans

overwinter in our pantries,

burst through our yards.