The crunch underfoot

I remember a morning
(there must have been many)
when I walked out the back door
and down the steps
(wooden, my father built them)
on my way to school
it was winter
and still with the undissolved
big red vitamin
tucked away in the side of my mouth
(lied and told my mother I had
swallowed it--an
impossibility)
now the red sweet coating worn off
and the bitter white
vitamin whose particular bitterness
even now, forty-some years
later, i can taste;
I trudged
down the gravel driveway
two long ruts from street to
backyard, the car in and out,
snow crunching underfoot
until I reached the downspout
tucked away on the side of the house
between jutting out walls and bay windows
below a tower,
there in the multicolored pool of
tiny pebbles
lying in a shallow puddle
I spit out my
vitamin,
but nothing grew
there in the spring.