I’ll return to my home town and
look in the windows of the house
I lived in to see
if I’m still around.
I’ll go to the ice cream shop
and ask for a double cone
not for the incense and crystals
selling there now.
I’ll look for my mom’s car
in the mall parking lot.
Have you seen it?
It’s a blue Buick Electra
with a crumpled right headlight.
Maybe I’ll go back to Mrs. Deere’s class
and win another spelling bee.
I’ll go fight that scoundrel Michael again
for taking my baseball cards.
I’ll find that kid
and pop him one – POW!

This town tries to fool me.
It’s hiding what I know
thinking I won’t find it.
Did you see the comic shop
it stuck under a condo tower?
It took the old couple
I raked leaves for and
put them side by side
underground.
The best playground is now
in the median
of the new bypass road.
It kept Stop n Shop and the Burger Barn
but they pretend I’m a dumb tourist.
It brought in all these strange people
who don’t know I was here first.
But I can’t be fooled,
I know what this town really is.
I remember.