PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

This happened on Saturday afternoon,

in July of nineteen seventy-six:

either the seventeenth or twenty-fourth,

or thirty-first.  I was not, then, mature

enough to have noted the exact date.

(Omissions like that were quite typical:

I was a little more than one month past

my eighteenth birthday, and almost four months

remained until BlueLevel's own eighteenth.

The small farm village in which both of us

had been raised was bounded on its west edge

by Verging Creek, perhaps three hundred yards---

nine hundred feet---west of the entrance to

the residential dead-end street on which

both of our families' ranch-style houses

were situated.  I drove my car, as

the heat was too oppressive to allow

a comfortable walk even that short distance.

Before we reached the entrance to our street,

BlueLevel had already removed his

shoes (with the platform heel made popular

by disco dancing).  He sure hated shoes,

and took his off whenever he could; he

knew that I liked him to take off his shoes

whenever possible, although he did not need

me to declare that in so many words

because he knew me that well . . . even then.

Not quite concealed beneath the tattered cuffs

of his distressed, faded, bell-bottom jeans,

his midnight blue socks ("crew" style I suppose)

were already quite fragrant (I would learn,

later that summer, that the fragrance was

sample of the flavor of his feet;

but that is for another---future---poem).

After a moment, we arrived and parked

(having turned in a nearby empty lot

to head the car eastward in order to

park on the south side of Verging Creek Pike).

BlueLevel stepped out and removed his shirt,

a sleeveless mesh tee, that he tossed on to

the back seat, and then dropped his shoes on to

the back floorboard.  A narrow, grassless path

led gently downward to the creek's east bank.

The creek had been a lovers' trysting place

(shielded, as parts of that east bank were, by

a heavy growth of tall and very thick

weeds), and it had been often visited,

most usually at twilight (warm weather)

for, certainly, at least a hundred years.

BlueLevel's bare torso was deeply brown,

which most of us who knew him tacitly

assumed was evidence (like his black hair.

which had assumed the texture of

profuse and loose black curls) to indicate

proof of Native American descent---

which he had claimed, proudly (and rightly so).

His nipples were quite prominent and dark

brown (which caused my mouth salivate some);

and I was very glad that my given

nature was queer, and that I wanted him

to be my lover and, even perhaps,

receive the gift of my virginity

(but when and where that pleasure was to be

shared was, still, just a flight of fantasy;

a fleeing from the stern reality

of that homophobic society

so prevalent and hateful presently).

At the bare foot of the footpath, the creek's

channel was narrowest and shallowest,

of all its southward flow that emptied in

the Great Miami River that crossed through

the whole square of our county.  At the edge

of Verging Creek's almost cold water, just

two inches deep that close to the edge, lay

a large, flat, tan rock, like a wide, broad slab;

its surface pockmarked with small fossils (shells,

mostly) that evidenced the kind of lives

that has been captured when that rock hardened---

thousands of centuries before our time.

Smiling slyly, and without speaking one

word, BlueLevel stepped from the edge on to

the rock's upward face (and I thought, at once,

what those socks might feel like on my upturned

face, and if I might wet them with my drool).

After a while, he said, "This feels so good!"

I answered him, then:  "You look mighty fine---

ten-ten and ten-eight shape," a metaphor

from C.B. Radio language that I

had learned from him, and others, since dusk on

Saturday, the tenth of that month when

he helped me find the handle, Starwatcher

(which, since that season, had evolved in form

to Starward-Led).  He helped me to acquire,

that night, my own identity apart

from the stark shadows of Betty and Lloyd,

adoptive parents.  Since my infancy,

I had been "Just the little boy around

"here," (my mother's often repeated words,

even as recently as that mid-week).

Starwatcher was not "just the little boy"

around BlueLevel, channel twenty-two

(our chosen radio community),

or while my parents' many lectures droned

on, on, and on.  But I did not want to

waste any further time thinking of them

while BlueLevel, shoeless and shirtless, stood

on a flat stone while Verging Creek gurgled

over, around and through his dark blue socks,

beneath the frayed cuffs of his distressed jeans.

I think he liked my shy gaze, and that he

might even have basked in my obvious

appreciation of this gesture and

my real desire to be with him "that way."

Did he know that the detailed memory,

that we shared on that weekend afternoon,

would generate uncounted hours and hours

of the most pleasureful remembering

even now (since then, half a century,

although its vintage seems a recency

as if it happened yesterday, or so,

and brings me back to ten-ten and ten-eight

shape, each and any time I think of him;

and how that simple gesture had pleased me

so much that it became part of my soul;

and, late in life, part of this poetry.

Starward*Led