(thanks to AF)
Freedom Summer, burned out
by that Sunflower County shack’s bullet holes,
fresh from fishing
for innocent smelt in the Mississippi Delta,
I flew to Swedish friends to flee the draft.
Stockholm syndrome of those days,
they’d put you up on the verdant lake island
where I toked time
in hippy ways I don’t recall
till returning fifty years after.
The few old people who remain
— mainly neighbors of a girl’s mother
took us all in — still talk about
the runner with the red bandana.
Gerard Sarnat is the author of two critically acclaimed poetry collections, 2010’s HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man and 2012’s Disputes. He has been published in over 75 journals and anthologies. Harvard and Stanford educated, Gerry’s been a physician who’s set up and staffed clinics for the disenfranchised, a CEO of health care organizations, and a Stanford professor. For The Huffington Post review of his work and more; visit GerardSarnat.com. Visingsö will appear in Gerry’s third collection, 17s, in which each poem, stanza, or line has seventeen syllables.