A Trip to Then
It’s a dangerous game, nostalgia.
A distant house and a time long passed away to misty recollection,
I take no trips to that far country, planned at least.
Yet as I walked along my happy here and now,
An unkempt patch of lofty sunlit flowers snatched my mind.
And as I stood martyred to the place, a quiet aura caught me up.
I thought to hear that distant sidewalk,
Listening, working apart the ropey threads of sound,
A purring shifting car on Hanson Street, crunching gravel as it comes along, into our unpaved drive,
The August locust pulsing, pulse, pulsing,
Bobby's dog panting, barking once or twice,
The mellow squeak of the screen door slamming softly,
The stopping sounds of the four-door Nash Sedan,
Slide and swish, “Who is it, Honey?"
"It’s Aunt Marcie.”
The slowly developed smell of bleach and dust and drying sheets,
Sun, sweet peas, hot sidewalks,
It’s a bumble bee that comes to take me back, riding on the prime meridian of home.
A distant house and a time long passed away to misty recollection,
I take no trips to that far country, planned at least.
Yet as I walked along my happy here and now,
An unkempt patch of lofty sunlit flowers snatched my mind.
And as I stood martyred to the place, a quiet aura caught me up.
I thought to hear that distant sidewalk,
Listening, working apart the ropey threads of sound,
A purring shifting car on Hanson Street, crunching gravel as it comes along, into our unpaved drive,
The August locust pulsing, pulse, pulsing,
Bobby's dog panting, barking once or twice,
The mellow squeak of the screen door slamming softly,
The stopping sounds of the four-door Nash Sedan,
Slide and swish, “Who is it, Honey?"
"It’s Aunt Marcie.”
The slowly developed smell of bleach and dust and drying sheets,
Sun, sweet peas, hot sidewalks,
It’s a bumble bee that comes to take me back, riding on the prime meridian of home.
Conservancy South Garden (July 2010)
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