what color were the rocks
in your fishbowl when you were a kid
dad?
i search my hard-drive
no hits
names, i remember their names
Cassidy and Althea
goldfish named after songs
summer songs
i open up summer and put those songs inside
so much of it is going
entire decades-
over-written partitions
limited available storage
i cut an apple for Finn
quarter and core it,
peel the skin,
i can’t remember ever being so picky
when i was a kid
i can remember apples
and the chill
of the falling down garage
at the orchard down
the old pitted & oiled dirt road
with deep swampy ditches
off Coomer and Hiller
where the apple lady
stored bushels
but happily sold us
pounds
i open this cored
and quartered apple
and put these memories
inside
outside,
chill summer
like that garage
mist and cloud
cool like all the
basements we went
down into, kids
in the midwest
taking shelter
not from tornadoes
but the heat,
the swell of humidity
the green of the sky
before a storm that might
cool the air for an hour
or more
i open up
Juneau summer
find a seam in the fog
fold it back
and put a cool
Michigan basement inside
mine are purple, and blue
and red and orange
i come back from
outside the window
or inside the basement
or the apple
and see Finn
my son, at the table
a wedge of crisp
fruit snapping between
his gapped front teeth
what i ask him?
mine are purple, and blue
and red and orange, the rocks
inside my fishbowl
my fish were gold
i didn’t call them goldfish
i called them Cassidy and Althea
they were the color
of summer sun reflected
in lily pocked pond
i remember bullfrogs
their song inside my bedroom
inside my sleep
i open the window
to this before time
this home place of
so much memory
spreading from inside
just thinking about it
i put myself inside
that window
that house
those bullfrogs and
their songs
inside we sing
Jonas Lamb 