And Then One Day

When I was fifteen I saw this girl so many

Stories begin that way don’t they with being

Young and encountering somebody beneath

A tattooed tree at a county fair a country girl

With blue eyes and wildly curly hair just

The tones of winter beech leaves and she

Leaned against the tree smoking a cigarette

She probably stole from her mother’s purse

Inhaling with more defiance than pleasure

There in the shade beyond the desperate
Conclusions of the sun O we never spoke

But we shared the same painful sense

Of the need to become educated we
Were thinking our own thoughts who else’s?