The elms spoke evenly to one another, over matters of the state 
and then they began, branching off into a, distant silence… 

leaving all others, hanging, on a limb.  You always seemed to 
question, why all of the star’s in Minnesota’s sky, would break 
through the night, like pieces of shattered glass.   They would 
shine so loud that, you would hear them, screaming out your 

name.   It always made you, feel like a naughty little school boy 
right, before he got caught touching himself,  inappropriately in the 
bathtub, by his mama.    When you were a small child, did you play 
hop-scotch, with a soda can that you’d crush -- beneath your right 

foot, then begin hopping & skipping over numbered pavement 
back, & forth on one leg -- then two, within a chalked out figure?  
I did, and for some strange reason that chalked out figure, always 
knew how to pronounce my full name & pronounce it, correctly.