one evening in seventh or eighth grade

one evening in seventh or eighth grade,

at a time of night when it was early

but already dark, I lay on my bed

with the lights off

and listened to the joshua tree,

which I had bought that afternoon,

all the way through, for the first time.

at some point after I had begun it again,

one of my parents came into my room

and told me it was time to go.

I got up and turned off the tape player

and passed through the darkened house

with he or she and the rest of my family

and we turned on the alarm and got in the car

and drove to a dinner party in berkeley,

about which I remember nothing

except that there were flagstones

in the garden, in the garden

there were flagstones

and it was probably autumn,

but to me everything remembered

happened in the spring.