She never said That big old spooky house 
or There were cows we milked in frosty light.
No word about the woods, the country roads, 
cold spring mud or farm county neighbors 
back before the Great War. Not a thing 
of sister-brother fights, who had what chores, 
bullies or brats or heroes. She talked about 
a flying-squirrel she found near death, 
and nursed to health, and made into her pet. 

Told how it climbed her bedroom curtains 
and flew from window-top to lintel, 
spread its underarm flaps and glided 
bed-post to closet shelf. Way out 
in Benton County, Arkansas, before 
ascendance of the horseless carriage or TV,  
dishwashers and bullet trains, Macs and PCs. 

There was the pet raccoon that freed itself 
and Vandal-trashed the kitchen, 
dried beans shot like bugs across the floor, 
the milk jug smashed, dill pickles’ broken stubs, 
her mama mad as hornets in a hose stream. 

She said she had a dozen pets, a hundred, 
possums, lizards, cats and mice and snakes, 
crows that spoke in tongues, a civet cat 
made out of moonlight and stink. A pygmy owl. 
Hybrid creatures from the deep woods 
clad in fur and scales. Maybe even bats, 
although that might have come from me, 
small boy, wide eyes. 

There were tales of alligators in the creek, 
Chickasaw braves who flew between the cypresses 
in local swamps. Her big-breath inflations 
re-summoned girlhood, all the tugged notes 
recomposed into pure desire’s grinning music. 

We didn’t hear about the day-to-day, 
how she became a Southern belle, 
campus beauty queen, this little girl I never knew 
or could, inside or out, from history or longing 
or the flying mix that was her lifelong specialty, 
the way she caught the breeze and glided 
post to post, and found the sun, 
and grinned her eyetooth grin.