A single windowpane called to me,
Through a velvety furniture maze
In the fancy living room
Do not touch
Do not sit on those fine things
Swirls about my busy mind
I ignore this voice
Floating to the soft wingback chair.
The heavy, expensive curtain drapes down
A king’s curtain to the floor
The trauma and violence from recent livings
Subsides
And through the square windowpane
Calm falls.
The winter-plowed fields rest quietly,
The grand evergreen tree sleeps across the two-lane road,
The one that the wild neighbor boys climbed,
Chucking grapes at unsuspecting cars.
A truck drives lazily by leaving behind
Schew schew noise.
It is today that I remember the windowpane
The winding road passing the ghosts of the horse
That I once fed carrots
The tobacco fields that erupted into neat rows come late spring
Where I witnessed the climatic, orange winter sunset
Bursting with red and purples and clementine colors
And the tiny evergreen tree, humbly standing under the streetlight
Spooky on a Halloween night,
At attention in summer,
But evermore present.
I will one day dream of this winding road,
Called Slaughter,
Where will it take me,
Where can I go,
And one day,
I will dream of it,
To visit this childhood home from long ago.
