Youth.
The sound of cicadas at dusk making a gentle hum.
I can remember the thickness of the summer air.
Looking across the Ohio river into the gray hills of West Virginia.
Reminded of what was the old coal town,
Where you were coated in black dust after stepping outside.
The old glass factory on the edge of town which had blown up
leaving a spray-painted exterior.
Just one of many industries that had thrived before I was born,
that I had never known.
Steel Mills and Coal Mines,
such was the stuff of memories.
We had peace on the back porch swing.
Dad puffing on his pipe,
grading exams.
Grandpa cracking jokes.
Grandma cleaning the kitchen after yet another feast.
She’d laugh,
“Oh that poor Giffin family have it bad, they never have enough to eat.”
A simpler hopeful time that never dies.
When I am reminded by,
the sound of cicadas at night,
making a gentle hum.
Categories: Manic Beatnik Riffing
Artist- Ted Giffin - Musician 
This is a great poem, bravo. It reads clean and reminds me of Gary Snyder’s poems.
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Thank you.. I started part of my creative journey writing at the age of 12,
when my dad would not let my try out for the football team. I wrote a paragraph
while all the kids suited up for the field. I went home and let Dad see what I had
written. He was proud. I usually do not have much to say or write these days.
This one just happened all at once while I was walking my dog. I will read
Gary Snyder, I am not familiar with him. Thanks so much for reading this!!!
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Wow!! I am amazed that I was unaware of Gary Synder! During the 1990’s I devoured almost all of Kerouac’s work,
I was really unimpressed with Burroughs, I saw Ginsburg in person once at a reading, and I have only recently
gotten into Bukowski, who seems really really twisted. In 1990 or so, in kind of a haze, I was around him,
we were all scarily drunk. So when I heard his name for the next 20 years, I had no interest in him, because
it reminded me of that paranoid edge night. So anyway..Thank so much.
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you write beautifully… there is some sweet melancholy about memories, isnt there…
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Yes there is, tho I have gotten to a point where I have resolved a lot
of the past, ready to deal with it in the moment if certain figures
from my life reappear.!
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