I Remember Keene In Texas

I Remember Keene In Texas
© Surazeus
2018 04 05

No matter where I live in this vast land
of fifty states, united by our love
for liberty, I feel the hot bright sun
soak my brain with memories of childhood
when I rode my bike summer afternoons
around the small town in east Texas hills.

While my mom and stepdad go off to work
in the furniture factory during the day
I ride my small bike, after pumping tires,
up the steep hill, legs sore as I breathe deep,
past the church we attend on Saturdays
to the small yellow-brick college library.

Pushing through the broad glass doors, I would sit
at the large roll top desk of dark shined oak
and write on the small yellow legal pad
I carried with me, like Harriet the Spy,
noting observations about the town
and various strange characters I would meet.

The slender woman, with short straight gold hair,
wearing Chanel suit green as summer grass,
like Jackie Kennedy riding through Dallas,
but fifty miles northeast of my small town,
shows me how to use the card catalog,
so I look up airplanes of World War Two.

While browsing books, I remember short story
I read in class about the Hobbit, lost
in lightless cavern, who found a magic ring,
and exchanged riddles in the dark with Gollum,
so I sit at large wood table in sunlight
and travel through Middle Earth with the Dwarves.

After I return home to the green Shire
with chests of gold and a blue shining sword,
I read books about linguistics and letters
to learn the arcane lore of alphabets
because Beren designed the Elven language,
then I design my own world I call Ranika.

When Carter is elected President,
I read ten-year-old fashion magazines,
gazing with love at exotic blonde models
who wear spacesuit dresses like on Star Trek
as they pose in ruins of the Parthenon,
and dream of holding them in loving arms.

When Star Wars appears in the theaters,
my mom gives me novel version to read
and cassette tape with excerpts from the movie,
so I bike to the library and borrow
large black player in the small enclosed room
where I hear Obi-Wan urge, "Use the Force!"

After we ride our ponies in the field,
Brenda and I walk holding hands in woods
where we sit shyly by the sparkling pond
and kiss to the chirping of birds in oaks,
then I sing Ballad of Gilligans Island,
and she laughs as sunlight shines on her hair.

I remember the town of Keene in Texas
where I grew up in the Nineteen Seventies
though I descend from Oregon Puritans,
so in every town sea to shining sea
I feel the bright sun shining on the grass
glow in the endless summer of my life.