NAPOWRIMO Day 30

I made it! Only six months behind schedule. Here is Day 30's poem which is a poem of statements that start with 'I Remember'.

I Remember

I remember when our neighborhood streets were paved and the barriers had non-electric lights that looked like canon balls with a huge lit wick coming out of the top.

I remember when toads lived in back yards and ate insects, the same insect species that we now attempt to rid ourselves of with chemicals.

I remember when houses were not built on flood plains, so not so many homeowners needed flood insurance.

I remember when cameramen on the Ed Sullivan show were told the night that Elvis was on, 'to not take shots of his belt because his moves were too erotic'.

I remember studying in my college apartment when the phone rang and a group of friends invited me downtown because "they are throwing rocks through store-front windows". I said no thanks.

I remember store-front windows.

I remember looking out my bedroom window through the fan shaped leaves of a Juniper tree, up to the night sky and understanding how large the Big Dipper really was.

I remember someone keeping a horse on their acre of land inside city limits.

I remember the first cold rain each September, and how good wool socks felt on my feet.

I remember starting to write a novel and realizing in the second chapter that the scenes and paragraphs and sentences were actually strung-together poems.

I remember so many kinds of love: of family, of enemies, of ends and beginnings, of middles, love of nature, music, the little boy in the parking lot who thought I was a super talent because I could whistle, birds, rain and sun and photons, and love for lots and lots of poems.