By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color–no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.
I Remember shows a memory of a love story. The poem starts out with youthful images: “we had worn our feet bare…” and begins to end: “the sun blew out of sight” showing the passing of the summer love. The emphasis of the Puritan lady shows how the love that is shared has become reserved and mellow. Also, the poem is written in past tense, showing that whatever emotions that were there are not current,