(for Richard Rico and my former colleagues)

I drove through town today with old
friends who knew me here when—
none of them embodied—their voices

and faces as sharp as the Exacto knives
we used to slice long galleys of type
to make a newspaper at 318 Main Street

three times a week, writing and shooting
every word, graf, column, image, headline,
caption tucked next to ads for the Nut Tree,

Vasquez Deli, for the McCune funeral
home and Mayor Bill’s TV shop. I was
proverbially green as the grass in

Andrews Park at my second newspaper
job out of college, no idea how much
those few years in that small town

would shape me, how those people
would take up residence in my heart
for the rest of my remembering—

not just the men who loved me
and one who married me—but in
every unexpected gift of the beloved

cop reporter’s joke captions under
photos, the soc hen and I sharing an
office with the publisher’s father,

arriving daily to write obits
of people he’d known for decades,
every reporter and editor handing

me new tools for my burgeoning toolbox,
a treasure chest of skills that took me
places I never expected to go.

But isn’t life like that? People extending
hands and hearts, not realizing how much
they’ve offered, me unaware of all that

I’d absorbed till much later, today driving
through town in 105-degree August heat,
warmed by visits with some who helped

me build that sturdy foundation,
who watched me grow wings I didn’t know
I had, ready to fly me into everything

I am.

•••

(also for Jim, Cliff, Linda, Brian (both of you), Kathy (both of you), Barry, Steve (both of you), Cynthia, Sully, Sue, Lou, Frank, Trey, Mary Lou, Dan, Margaret, Gary and so many others)