What I’d Give
Author: Bill Roberts
What would I give to once again
feel that growing summer heat
in Georgetown, walk its streets
in the morning, no one else out yet?
What would we give, Dickie Keyes
and I, to trudge again down Rocky Hill
toward the Francis Scott Key house
ruins to dig up sleepy fishing worms?
What would I give to have to untangle
that first eel from the line, fighting
for its life, unsure whether I’d throw
it back in the muddy C&O Canal?
What would we give to carry our string
of sun perch and fat carp up
the hill to the House of David, sell
our catches to those thankful, bearded Jews?
What would I give to have Dickie back
in life again, just to talk about those
slothful summer days in Georgetown?
I’ll tell you true – I’d give a lot.
(Published online in the Summer 2008 issue of ken*again)
Note: Yes, I know – another nostalgia poem including old pal Dickie Keyes. Dickie was for real, but really in my poems a metaphor for so many other friends I was lucky enough to know growing up. Dickie lived around the corner (another way of saying, on the right side of the tracks) in a big house, had an ancient Victorian bathtub with a wooden lid that folded back on itself, so we could talk while he bathed in modest naturalness. Me? I rarely bathed, I fear. Those were the days before roll-on deodorant, which none of us cool guys would have used anyway. Who wanted to please girls? We were big into pleasing ourselves. And it was great fun growing up in George Washington’s town, Georgetown, in Northwest D.C.
