Poem: May 14, 2019

There From Here

If I could paint a picture of a life
that I might choose for us, I imagine
I would start in some impossibly
sunny seaside town in which all
of the houses have names and history,
but never leak, never sag beneath
their own weight- all clapboard
siding painted in bright colors,
but worn to show their age with
window boxes and garden gates,
and every neighbor interesting
and artful and well-read, and every
shop and tavern local, and every
citizen actively in love with our town
in which all of our families live
simple and extended lives and play
chess and card games and create
sculptures that linger in our shared
spaces, all tasteful, all curious.
Some European place with narrow
lanes and flower carts and ruins
on a hill. Some place with ghosts
and stones. A place to go slow
and work our essential work with
both our minds and with our hands,
where we would return home early
to uncork wine and eat cheese
and apples with our friends. And you
and I would walk green mossy paths
in the evenings and read to each other
from leather-bound books. Whitman.
Atwood. And in the gray-blue distance
the sound of trains, and nearer us,
the clear and playful passing of a brook.