When we met I was drawn to your shoulders, your arms.
There is a strange sense of free there,
and all through you.
Later, you would explain your hairstyle to me as a pineapple:
Blonde dreads piled high into a spray of spikes
You told me that they shaved your hair in juvvy,
and you've been letting it grow ever since.
You told me that the peanut
Is the slut of the legume family,
And that truly superior butter is yielded by the cashew
but that almond is also okay.
I wondered how you could live on soy milk and
Peanut butter sandwiches, and you wondered how I could live by
borrowing time from a job that I hated.
Adam in the Rain
Adam, we were complaining about the rain and I said,
"I bet we could stop it if we all tried, but I can't do it alone here." Laura thought it was a good idea and we both closed our eyes and strained against creation.
You said, "I bet you could. But I don't want to stop the rain. I mean, think about it, we need water to live, and it's falling on us."
I thought, you're right, I should be out there. I should be feeling the sky weep on me instead of cursing it from the "safety" of this van. The humid half-dry feeling of camping with strangers.
Half an hour earlier we had stuggled to keep the mechandise dry, poking random sticks, toys, and ... me, the resident childlike adult into the tarp to make the water run down the sides of the vendor stall. I got splashed right on the head, but I got to ride on Michael's shoulders, and I saved a rack of flip'n'fliers from certain destruction.
That morning, Adam, we played together, we exchanged toys and traded tricks. In the early dawn at Ninigret, storks and herons caught fish, foxes lurked, and you and I traded what secrets we could bear to part with. We caught each other's tosses, we touched without swapping sweat. I gave you parts of me that I never thought to share. It was so embarassingly platonic, and refreshingly intimate, but we could've been brothers if I'd been raised as a boy.
On a Sunday night, after two days spent wiping snot off of our demo toys, I sorely needed rebaptism. So I stumbled, backache and twisted ankles out of the stuffy toymobile into the gentle falling curtain of the Rhode Island night. The night toys were out and you were teaching boys to do the weave with glowsticks tied onto shoelaces for lack of practice poi.
There was no one left to serve but myself, so I danced.
Dance, people. Dance!