White Paper

                                                You write a white paper

And ask if I recall

The years that have left us

So different and all.

I remember paper mill lined years

In the factory town of Downing.

I got names. Wonder where they went?

I got crying, shouting, sermons, clowning.

I remember a girl, ringlets and curls,

A closed-minded, mousey little rodent

Whose father ran over some young child?

I remember the carnival rumble, locals hurling

Black coals at all the carny people? They ended the fair,

Replacing it with smoky smog and deadness.

I remember the kid in the flood swept through the water pipes,

The swirling stream wasted the red cover of her books?

I remember climbing the loose-graveled Raymond Rock?

Top two feet, hung in fear, with ground deserting,

Grinding my teeth and swallowing, gripping like a lock

And never allowing a cry of panicked help go blurting.

Hmmm! The haunted house where the old German farmer

Got burned out by a hooded committee of God-fearing Americans,

Where we went in innocence never knowing the clan existed?

And afterward wondering if it could happen here again.

I remember we were going to be rich, set the world afire,

Be he who made good in the art field with cluttered canvas,

Enough so you won the school prize with the product of your desire,

But giving it all up, like me, fifty years ago. Damn us!

Sure, I remember those green years flavored peppermint

Down in the town where the factories were in Downing.