Conflation

The first thing I tell them is that I liked
a girl down the street and her brother drove
a 1968 Chevy Chevelle with a fake license plate
upfront that said “BEAST.” I don’t tell them
how my brother and I couldn’t date either Denise
or her sister because Beast would certainly
run us off the road like mourning doves
hobbling on the desert streets for no good reason.
But I do tell them my brother and I succeeded
in getting them stoned while sitting next to the hidden north side
of a local lutheran Church where scottish pine grew
around the fake adobe building like we were in Atzlan or something.
That night, I had a dream of cluttered back-lot alleys fertile
with the red clay mud of a wet Albuquerque summer.
Sometmes, I finally relate, I go back and all the homes
are red colonial brick with Georgian trim. And now
there are so many trees, so many species besides
the wind-swept Western Cottonood. Trees
with names like purple light of the sun or green flash of life.