Day 21 National Poetry Month 2015

*Ice cream cone, sauerkraut, spoon.   from Anne
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It wasn't so much for an ice cream cone,
although that was always a delicious benefit,
that we'd drive up and down Main Street
from Norm's Drive-In to the Dairy Bar
looking for our friends and cute boys.

I'd ask my dad to use the car, we'd pool
our money, buy as much 29 cents
per gallon gas as we could afford, then
begin our journey through the sauerkraut
air of that paper mill town.  But, the smell

didn't bother us; we were too busy gawking
in all the cars driving by, gossiping about
this person and that one and what they'd done
or hadn't done or might do.  Through Green
Square, by the stores, checking who

was hanging out in front of Woolworth's,
and all along the Androscoggin River, we were
this bubble of chatter and music and hope.
Life was a bowl of maple walnut ice cream
and we were savoring it one spoonful at a time.