Early Days

I admit very little. I do admit some few homes and each, different. Many voices calling me toward home.
I am never homeless, nor ever, maybe, quite at home . . . I am most at home when I slow to stop and sup on local cuisine.
I eat, from post-war 1943 bananas in Klamath Falls, Oregon to crawfish from ditches in Archer County, Texas.
I scrap and scrape the perch from Archer City Lake to mingle with the backyard corn and scrawny tomatoes.
I was a child of some plenty, with no electricity nor flush; a puppy among mad dogs feeding their pups.
It seemed to be always them or us.

II.
I remember turnips, carrots, potatoes and even varieties of other fragile greens
with bullfrog or catfish, washed, scrubbed and chopped into something worth eating
and trading bites at the table to see who grabbed the more delicious bites
riding the school bus back from Antelope, Texas and Barbara Allen cutting strips of my hair while I pretended to sleep but dreamed, totally awake, of her fingers clipping my salted hair
I was not hungry, angry, ignored nor aware that many people spent their lives mostly afraid and without food
I was mostly poor but sitting on the top side of a world tilted on its side.