my first real hippies
I agreed minus the drugs
they’d lived on a commune
high in the mountains
where years later I caught trout
a professor’s social experiment

her hand went up and down like a ‘coaster
she said their relationship had been like that
she said life was like that
she made huckleberry pancakes
and scared the black bear out of the garden

he took me to the lake
he wrote songs for me
he gutted fish for me
I thought he meant every word he said

she was better than jumper cables
he said, for a bed companion
what I’d always feared, here’s proof
that he wanted to marry, not just me

2000 miles away
as the light across the parking lot fades
in long orange rectangles
the power line catches and gleams
beauty that provides
understanding her hand will rise