There’s just something about

how ancient stones roll under my feet,
how the gloss of buttercups
catches the sun and honeysuckle
scents the air as I walk my gravel driveway
to the dirt road below.
 
How I can smell those lilacs—
the bunches we picked—arms loaded down,
hearts full with youth, bursting
with summer. How we deposited
those purple clusters, stuffed them,
into that blue box, flowers
for the mailman we adored.

There’s something now about
removing and filling, as I pull out
what is meant for me, insert
a note to my friend, point
the red flag up,
like a steeple to heaven.

May: 2007

If only, I could imagine them always

this way: my father, perched high on the roof,
sun-down at his back. Coffee steams
from an open Thermos—his attention
for the briefest moment each evening
lost on a young woman with black hair
and her red plaid coat as it tosses in the wind
when she leaves through the Salem factory gate.
This, the good morning of the watchman’s nights.

January: 2007

Just two weekends ago I was thinking

how we didn’t work on our landscape plans this year,
how it’s been five whole years we’ve been saying
what we will do. How that one last
mowing, raking, picking up the yard got away,
how our neighbor’s land is perfect, even fieldstones in their place.

But today I think how winter equals us all in Maine—
eighteen inches of snow, my path pristine as theirs—
us out in the driveway of our mobile home with shovels,
them down the road with theirs. How we’re all supposed
to dig out mailboxes by eight in the morning,
each of us grateful to hear the other
scraping the ground.

November: 2007