Dear Donna
Thought you might want
this photo from
Senior Prom, 1969.
I’m the dork.
You’re the beauty.
Dad’s Polaroid always
impatient with the fixer
streaked like memory.
After prom we walked
in rain, dripping
eyelashes kissing.
Borrowed poncho leaked
brown, ruined the rented
tux but you still have
the pressed corsage,
you told me at reunion.
Joe Cottonwood is happy to be called an old hippie. His new book of poetry is Random Saints — poems of kindness for an unkind age. He’s a semi-retired home repair contractor and a lifelong writer sheltering with his high school sweetheart among redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.
