Define Home and From
 
"What is your hometown?"  Quailing
senseless, right?  Standard cocktail party
fare.  Got your cheese straws, got your
leering staggerer, got no place to sit,
got the same old tired Where-from.
Cough up the state, fine.  Even bristle
at "Illi-noise."  But all those moves!
Walls still shift.  Bridges, signs.
Still, the same state, prior escape via
milk train at 17.  Memory sepias feed-
littered square and creep-free alleys
great for kick the can and making holly-
hock dolls.  Certain park in a certain
city solaced for a time.  My mother
and father had grown up thinking Memphis
was the be-all-and-end-all. Let down, they
went for broke: Wild and Wooly Nawth!
Damn-yankees never, but we are already
pretending.  Catch your deaths, kin drawl.
Who needs black ice and cold shoulder?
"Write you from U-ville.  'B'baa."  Four
semesters later, baby, sheepskin and hard
times land them in wind-torn, gang-
smelling Gargantua.  But first a shot of
Fedora, stiff beside Ladies Cloth Coat,
Damaged.  Frost-clouded lips,  box-shaped
car. Toddler's all snowsuit, mittens, and
eyes.   Clanking, spitting, radiators and  
hard-frozen drifts soon lead to cornbelted
river "burg."  Inside,  battles.  Outside,
a shining river hums.  Pink and yellow
posies path to curlicued bandstand.   
Banks beg to be sledded,  hills to be
climbed. Walks to school and drifting
summers stretch time and space.  Until
a July divorce spins losing parties to a
walk-up by tracks in a cow-town that
being made capitol made too big for her
britches.  But just look.  Silver maples
lace fingers with elms.  Black walnuts, blue
spruces, Jack-in-the-Beanstalk  tall pines.  
That one's a pin oak, someone said.  Got
walks to run, rain and shine.  Hiding park
with echoing gazebos and ducks wearing
rings now emerald, now cobalt.    Lucky,
snag a ride to the  lake.  Last apartment a  
hole, but high school's a hop, skip, and jump
by alley.  Great for slipping to deserted
to lunch on bottled Coke and Lucky Strikes.
All under the bridge.  Dead or flew coop.
Next  question?  Now I got one for you.
Is it okay to  mix hometowns?  Shake or stir
into a martini?  Just a thought.  Where
have those stuffed mushrooms gotten off
to?   Do any of you know?