Do you recall those earlier days when lost in a haze, I would follow you anywhere?
Jumping off the bridge on our bikes onto the small island in the middle of a stream.
Riding headlong into a cornfield, the plants smashing against us.
The 4th of July when we snuck into the park,.no one knew we got in for free.
It was all a storybook adventure.
You were something like a hero to me.
We got high for the first time before band practice and spent the day laughing as only fourteen year-olds can.
I loved that first year of High School.
We sat close together in a private world until the teachers separated us.
When the class had to read aloud from some obscure text, I never could because you would make me laugh.
You were rebellious, full of pranks.
We put discarded Christmas trees on top of people's cars.
You got nabbed shoplifting candy, not content with the free samples the outlet provided.
It was all in good fun.
We slept over at each other's houses always trying to sneak out after curfew.
Your parents would catch us and order us back to bed.
One night we made it to the school building.
How different it seemed in the dark.
You were Tom and I was Huck.
I never suspected those days would end with no more Summer vacations to fill.
We were in the same Cub Scout pack.
You insisted we join marching band and I was stuck trying to learn how to play the trumpet.
Those bus rides were fun with Renata's head in my lap.
You and I and Brenda formed the terrible trio.
Everything changed during our Sophomore year.
You went off each morning to Vo-Tech.
You got a car and your family moved to another part of town.
That was the beginning of the end.
After graduation, you signed up to the Navy and were placed on a ship in San Francisco.
We did write back and forth.
You called me when you went AWOL and were unsure of what to do.
Things got heavier and sadder for awhile.
When you returned home, I was somebody new, myself for the first time.
Kevin M. Hibshman has had poems published in many journals and magazines world wide.In addition, he has edited his poetry zine, Fearless, since 1990 and is the author of sixteen chapbooks including Love Sex Death Dreams (Green Bean Press, 2000) and Incessant Shining (Alternating Current, 2011).
Cease To Destroy from Whiskey City Press.
His current book is Lost Within The Garden Of Heathens also from Whiskey City Press and currently available through Amazon.
