Doyle

How I learned to love drugs, among other things

Seventeen years old

I first spied Doyle

Atop a fully loaded silage truck

Bare chested, pitchfork in hand

Shoulder-length blond hair gleaming

In the hot July sun

A hippie god

Who descended to become

Our pied piper of weed and speed

At times from his glove box

He passed around a jar of amyl nitrite

At times he had acid

Rumored a refugee from prison in California 

Where he served out an arson conviction 

He had returned home to Monroe

A veteran of Haight Ashbury

To us he was only about love

He was especially kind to

Girlfriend Robin and I

That first summer inviting us 

To the farm outside Sultan

The site a year earlier 

Of the Sky River Rock Festival and

Lighter Than Air Fair

The first in the U.S. to be held on

Open pasture land 

Where he was now encamped 

In a lean-to built of cedar limbs

Scrap lumber and plastic tarps

That was home base on our rare days off

From there we often drove 

Deep into the woods 

To skinny dip in Lost Lake 

A secret playground of aging hippies

Who had patched up an aging rotting dock

Despite the age difference 

For three years he was a best friend

Particularly when we all returned

To summer jobs at the vegetable packing plant

At a raucous party in town one night

Which we attended at his invitation 

Older strangers were doing heroin

In the kitchen

Doyle warned us, never ever try it

And he never dealt it

Shortly after

We learned he was in County lockup

Always a low profile, low volume dealer

Someone apparently ratted him out

The last time I saw Doyle

He was living in his mother’s house

On a quiet Monroe street

We drove up to find him sitting 

In the driveway in the blazing sun

Sweat beaded on his forehead 

Bent in concentration on his lap

Speeding like crazy

Sewing beadwork onto a strip of leather

For a headband

Doyle our hippie hero

Who changed our young lives

Forever

Reviews

[red93]

How relatively innocent it all seems now Michael, compared to current revelations in the UK and US Media. Clearly a Golden Age of Peace and Love. Ken Kesey has a lot to answer for 😁 Really Excellent ✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️

[Michael Sun Bear]

You know it was a time of innocence, but for me perhaps that was due to being raised by uneducated parents and attending school in a small town. In reality the U.S. had begun invading countries not our enemy, Korea and Vietnam, and the CIA was conducting criminal activity around the world. It really wasn’t a time of innocence.

[red93]

Understood. But for you personally and yr circle, it sounds like a happy time I hope.

[Desert Knave]

Wow. I could come close to seeing Doyle, as you've described him, in one of the people I used to hang around when I thought chemicals were the answer to everything. Great write. ~Jim

[Michael Sun Bear]

Thanks Jim, I imagine many young people have had their Doyle’s.

[Thomas W Case]

This hits like memory scorched into sunlight—raw, nostalgic, and alive with the pulse of a wild, fleeting summer.
You can feel Doyle in every line, a ghost of kindness and chaos stitched into the heart of youth.

[Michael Sun Bear]

Thomas thank you, you get it. Oh those summers of our teen years.

[John the Baptist]

It would be interesting to know what became of Doyle. There were many people who congregated in San Francisco in the 60's and took up the hippie lifestyle. Dope was a big part of it, but the poem tells us Doyle avoided heroin and refused to sell it. Apparently he returned home, but that's all we know. It would be ironic if he ended up selling insurance, but stranger things have happened.

[Michael Sun Bear]

You came very close in one respect. The last year that I knew him, he somehow got a temporary job during tax season working for H&R Block, a job for which even he admitted he was totally unsuited.