My Hippy Girl Friend

Art: Bree & Dreamweaver Coat by Lisa Graham

My Hippie Girl Friend;
a compendium of girls in one of my lives

She was the girl of my dreams.  Barefoot, wearing a flower in her hair, she sat by me in Differential Equations class.  We sat on the back row, she was writing an essay for English 317 while I was busy taking notes and trying to understand.  I got my "C", she made a big "A".

Leaving her yellow dog at the building steps, my friend with straggly blonde hair complained to me of the campus police feeding the dogs.  Our walks were full of them, sleeping and waiting for their straggly haired lady friends to get out of class.

She rode an old bike, pedaled herself all over the town.  I drove my seven-year-old '62 Volkswagen, one with a cloth top that rolled back for letting the sunlight in.  On rainy days I might give my girl friend a ride.  I remember the day I locked my keys in the VW while it was still running.  That embarrassed me.

We built a sidewalk where before the children had none.  They walked to school in the mud.  Saturday mornings this was the thing we did.  It was a ride of sixty-miles to the north edge of town.  We talked of the things we liked, the things we did before, and what we wanted to do. We'd stop on the way home to get food for her cats and a bone for the dog.  Had a sundae for the road.

Then one afternoon after lunch, the day came we didn't go back to work.  We must have talked the afternoon away.  I felt she wanted to do other but my honesty said no.  Her husband was in the Army and wasn't due home for another six months.  But I'd been there, done that unawares, it isn't fair.

One day she, I won't say who, came to my apartment and we went for motorcycle ride.  Enough said about that, her hubby was in the service too.  I played it honest, straight, and narrow.  I dare say these last two were inviting for more and I still have some regrets. 

On sunny Sunday afternoons I'd ride my motorcycle around in the parks.  Seemed there was a band playing under every tree.  I tell myself that the ZZ Top (link) played there also with the oodles of others.  The Beatles were slowing, the hippie girls were outgrowing.  I couldn't pick out my friend there, there were so many.  In the parks, on the streets, and on Saturday nights swarming over the loading docks on Prairie Street.

A nice coworker girl she, we had a date.  She was of the hippie variety, we both dressed better for work.  At a Rice versus Houston football game, WE lost my car at Rice Stadium.  So we waited until the crowd left and then the car was still there, NOW waiting for us. 

This is a true account, with a twinge of historical fiction.  Meaning that while working and going to school, my dates were few, my acquaintances were many.  Even still more in my dreams. Each stanza tells of a different girl, either real or typical.
Three years of my other life.
 
The one I (finally) married?  A hippie girl at heart.

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Poem Copyright © 2014 Jimmiehov. All Rights Reserved

Today I'm linked with the Real Toads, Sunday Feature featuring Lisa Graham.