Autobiography: The Early Years

"Bring out your dead!" and I did, roadside
service; Auntie Mame and Uncle Joe , (and Little Timmy)
    hauled away--
my childhood stacked like cordwood
on the rickety cart with the huge
wooden wheels half sunk in the muddy lane,
but turning still, round and round.

And spring once more, the sun made its rounds
over the mountainside
above our drafty house where the weak had lain
all season. How they weighed
upon me, their presence huge
in the small room of thatch and wood

and shuttered windows which would
not keep out the wind or the rounds
sung over the sour beer in the huge
outdoors beyond our door. Mame, lying there, sighed
just to hear their harmonizing way
down the treeless lane.