Shimmying Beneath the Pines

Kate’s mother was sure we were destined
to be juvenile delinquents, blasting the Archies
through the pines in the back yard, rock and roll
our demise, but oh how our bodies shined then,
shined and moved and loved every minute
of being a Sugar, Sugar. How were we to know
that songs like that denigrated our womanhood,
made us these subservient creatures incapable
of plotting our own course? Predictions being
what they are, Kate and her boyfriend stole
a taxi and drove it to Baltimore. Underage
and with no prior convictions in juvenile
court, they got by with probation, and I moved
away to a city where everyone enunciated
words to the point that I wanted to pull
out their damn tongues and cut off an inch
or two, as if that would make them sound the same
as the world I left, a universe all its own, tidal pools
and fossil pits, the breaking waves nearing ever closer
to the Norwegian woman, the gathering place
for my mother and her friends, who wore short skirts
and hot pants, that place where I saw my first and only solar
eclipse, the crowd gathered looking through negatives,
the imprint of memory still on my cornea all these years
later. And I miss those people and those days, the narrow
margin that divided me between delinquency and abuse
not enough to offer comfort, and I wonder what's become
of Kate and my mother's hot pants friends, in their
sixties and seventies now, and I wish I still had that need
to peer into the shallow waters of a tidal pool, like I did
at twelve, curious about the earth and life, animated
and progressive, filled with questions, not this disenchanted
woman who doesn't realize often enough that it's not
the answers that matter, it's the questions.