THOUGHT I’D LIVE IN A HOUSE

in the country, surrounded by trees,

she speaks aloud on our Sunday drive.

Marveling at the wealthy homes she sees.

Waking to songs of birds, I’d feel so alive.

coffee on the deck to begin each day,

It’d feel like church, a perfect place to pray.

Set way back off the road, so much space.

Now I know we’ll never live in such a place.

AMERICAN DREAM

they always said how you need to buy a house,

a big deduction, it’ll never lose its value, besides

paying rent is just like throwing your money away.

high mortgage, a home not worth what we paid,

property taxes go up every year, too many repairs

just keep taking all the money that we both make.

Now we look forward to the apartment we’ll rent.

BOONDOCKERS

On Saturday morning I jumped out of bed,

put on my husky Toughskins, tube socks,

a Flyers ski cap and a red plaid flannel shirt.

I laced up my boondockers and headed off

to the woods of my youth in South Jersey.

I heard men laughing, the chainsaws buzzing,

logs clunking into the bed of an old Ford pickup.

I found my Grandfather with his teacher friends

on the edge of a soy bean field, near the pond

I’d fallen into more than thirty some years ago.

I ran to the forest, stopped to exchange stares

with a whitetail deer, found the brook where

the scared muskrats scurried and an otter swam.

I climbed trees, crossed streams, chucked rocks,

took cover behind maples, charged a hill with sticks,

breathed in cold fresh air and it made me invincible.

DREAM VACATION

One day, is how the story always began,
a description of fly fishing in Alaskan waters,
a pontoon plane for hire, landing right on the lake.
A week’s worth of catching rainbow trout,
sockeye salmon, northern pike on the shores of
Echo Lake, Cottonwood Lake, and Coyote Lake.
Eagles flying above icy waters, the greenest trees.

Now when I stop to think about him,
it’s hard to remember him speaking of a
trip or vacation in his life of labor and work.
Maybe he considered the days of driving a
General’s Jeep in Japan a type of trip.
Working in logging camps of North Carolina,
living in the woods, movable cabins on sleds
dragged to where the timber was logged.
Driving his tractor for a huge factory farm in
New Jersey must’ve been a type of adventure.

Perhaps he felt he’d already seen the country,
truckloads of Christmas trees, delivering shrubs
to the White House, those days as a nurseryman.
In the end, his greatest trip, back to the foothills
of Tennessee with his sons, where they grew baccer,
thousands of acres of maters, and raised cattle.

Each day, content to walk out his front door
to work in his fields, his greenhouses, his garage.
His wife traveled with her sisters to Myrtle Beach,
Florida, river boat cruises, but he stayed behind.
Content to sit in a slow moving rocker on the porch,
enjoying strong black coffee in a old chipped cup,
smoking, telling his plans of one day going on a trip.