Merced, 1964

They stand in front of a big black car that 

Waits patiently as they pose, ready to 

Take them to their new lives, drenched in early 

Morning California haze, the sun 

So low three young shadows grow across the 

Frame, as dark as my mother’s hair at eighteen.  

She wears wedding white and he air force blue,

Short hair and boyish face, in the too soft

Focus of nineteen-sixty-four, the year 

I was born to these unfamiliar 

Children, he who went to Vietnam and 

She who let me run away and come home 

To the house of Atreus, the Merced 

Address with the big backyard full of grass.