Snail Moon

Blue reminds me of rain reminds me of the snails as big as moons we used to find after the first rain — drop-pearls in the neighbors’ front lawn. There was a dog named Coco who bit like mad and was sent away like a disgraced boarding school child and a swing tied by rope onto the mulberry tree and a neighbor named John who was in middle school and played basketball and promised to teach me next Friday. 

It rained and the next time I saw him he told me his mother wouldn’t let him go outside; neither had mine. Blue reminds me of the porcelain swan my grandmother bought at the garage sale from the neighbors on Yuba Avenue for $20 in wrinkled cash, reminds me of how we said goodbye the next week in the airport and remembered her only by the taste of mugwort rice cake from the second freezer in the garage. 

Blue reminds me / blue is Payne panther pride and being seven or ten or eight or eleven. Blue is a memory game on the lifetime guarantee table we bought when we first moved in and were still finishing painting the dining room ceiling pink and so is everything else — the biggest game of recollection and association you’ve ever seen, the biggest half-moon snail in shining grass, only you can’t tell which is brighter — the snail or the green.