Flipper - (Poteet, Texas 1965)

Flipper
---------
(Poteet, Texas 1965)

Having
--just
unpacked from yet
another _cross-country_ move

--this time
from
Tuba City, Arizona
to
Poteet, Texas

more white stripes
and mile markers to count

this time in an old station wagon
with an overloaded trailer (again!)

[fodder for another poem]

trading Navajos and Hopis
for cowboys

the mother never said why--
why this move?
why here?

there was no tv north of Flagstaff,
except at the uranium mine --
[the miner kids boasted about
Mutual of Omaha
ads on the cable tv set]

---even the Beatles arrived without
me knowing what the craze was
all about -- those wigs in the stores?

why?

the new house on the edge of Poteet
had air conditioning
and the strawberry capital of Texas?

--it had tv--

after unpacking
and turning on the tv set
(not used since Greeley, Colorado)
the gray luminescence
--oozed--
into the living room ...

the television show?

--Flipper--

josjr (2010 1112)