I cannot remember: when blackberries are dropped
Into an aluminum pot do they ping or not?
Is the berrying soundless or muffled?
Did Rusty your Katharine Hepburn of an Irish setter

Detonate grasshoppers like so many land mines
As she sped in every direction
While we bent to our asked-for task
(Enough for a pie if we got home on time,

If not, for with sugar and cream)?
I ask because most of our childhood is not there, for me.
I only see you pumping up a hill, playing-cards
Splatting the spokes of your Schwinn,

Your braids supposedly blown off your pinafored shoulders,
I sitting beanbagged at the top of stairs leading down
To where children who knew how to, played.
Nor can I recall if when we picked we quarreled

(You ahead, industrious, I out of sight behind,
So we had to yell to find were we alone).
You are many pecanned backyards from me now, Nan.
Are your Shreveport memories those of prying some milkweed fairies

Free to float like unwritten entries in a journal by Thoreau
Or are they memories of the rat-like kittens which died,
Something like flies in their fur and eyes,
Though we nursed them all night from doll-bottles

Of fingertip-tested boiled milk?  I have no greeting card
Hallmarked by truth to give you, yet.
Perhaps we can talk some happiness
When we meet.

I only puff parachutes of thought
From this whiffball
Which if you test them back
Your lips must shape a kiss.