Cover me in the surrendered silence of those

forgotten children

who traveled with me to adult hood,

with leaking roofs and starving bellies,

I can see as if it were early morning vespers

back up in the hills of Virginia,

where the backbone of the devil takes aim at a bigger

Bull Mountain,

a place upon the passage of modern measuring time

moves slowly one can fell the pinch of the northern winds

coming at me from that grade school

where me and those poor rocket boys played marbles

for keeps

when in our lifetime the Valentine's gift of the girls in

our childhood meant little to those of us who bloomed late,

for poverty is a hidden cruelty not measured in scientific

ways and means but by the dark circles under the little

boys eyes, holes in their dungarees, and that ever repugnance

of moth balls, kerosene and chewing tobacco,

where are

those sad school bells that have gone quickly silent for the day and this century,

as I face the limits of mortality and adverbs

I wonder, always, especially when my stomach growls for

a snack,

if they are still playing marbles around this time

are those rocket boys with their growling kick ball,

close to the Blue Ridge when I was a visitor,

I knew the signs of hunger and poverty's lace,

yet, it was all forgotten for the moment

when Glenn orbited the earth and

Kennedy went to Dallas one Thanksgiving,

there were no rocket boys to save him

as he turned onto Elm and into our heartbreak

hotel.