On a Street in Montgomery

(for Keith, my cousin)

there lives a memory

in the shadow

of long dead canopies

of elms,

for which most

of my life,

I blamed the Dutch

for their disappearance.

Though these days,

I have learned to

question that attribution.

You and I,

ten years old

ride our bicycles

through the summer air

and talk of girls

and the next school year

with no thought

of becoming old men

or even teenagers.

We had already lived through JFK

MLK, the moon landing

and the end of the Beatles.

What more could be left?