To Iowa

Four little sleepy souls
and one torpedo van

Molly asked
if Mamma was still awake

All through Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas,
All the long black road to Iowa
The landscape changes,
But we do not

We don't have to be lonely,
not ever

Seven years
Have made a family

We rid
and drive
and laugh and yell
get bored
and laugh
again

Too many hours in a car
But we're adding up
The eighth year

Family and friends
People I never knew
Whom I now can't imagine
Not knowing
Will wave us in,
hug us in the driveway;
We will eat at their tables
and sleep in their beds

All the long, long roads
from San Francisco to Iowa,
Arkansas and Texas -
There were three, four,
then five and six
And we will go back and back
and back again
As long as we live,
we six,
Our family

I watch
unspoiled Kansas
Roll and dip its green hills
Its groves of trees
shading over lazy cows
little ponds edged with reeds
Farmhouses,
tight, cozy homes -
Kansas stretches;
My eyelids
drop as if by hanging weights
And I dream the rollings hills
All the way
to Iowa

July 21, 2010

Hanging Spanish Moss

I remember that road,

The one deep and by the river;

The one with the Live Oak trees

With all the hanging Spanish moss.

We talked that day -

Do you remember?

About how peaceful, how cool, how beautiful the sunset -

About how nice the river was

With all the dancing colors of the setting sun.

We liked looking at the houses up on stilts,

those vacation homes just near the banks of the river -

Red, yellow, blue and orange, those wooden homes . . .

Do you remember?

I talked about a cemetery I had once seen in a photograph,

with tall, proud stones under hanging Spanish moss,

with stone angels,

their wings folded,

their hands folded,

their heads bent over the graves . . .

It seemed so restful to me, and I said

I wouldn't mind resting there when it was my time.

You said that didn't sound so bad.

I remember that day

And the peace and the colors and the calm . . .

I hope that you remember it too.