THE PLACE WE WENT
The place we went
Is a Walmart now
Selling Wonder Bread
And other things
People buy instead.
Three hundred miles apart,
We found the place we went halfway,
Spread a blanket and drank Chardonnay,
Under ancient maple trees,
Lay back for hours counting
Countless green and golden leaves.
The rutted roads were nameless
To the place we went so long ago,
How on earth we found it,
That, I’ll never know.
It would lift us out of time
If we could find it once again,
As so many times it did
In harder days, back then.
Where might our back road refuge be,
Safe harbor for the unsettled soul?
It waits beneath a concrete sea
Where an armada of shopping carts roll.
Can you still remember?
With troubles all around us
That seemed to never cease,
The place we went made for us
A free and easy peace,
Turning every precious second
Into a radiant eternity.
Can you still remember
That breezy day in late September
When a deer disturbed our sleep,
Your head at rest upon my chest,
Dreaming together
In silence miles deep?
As twilight shadows reach our feet,
Recall the place we went to see
A flickering forever, coincidentally
The very place we soon shall be.
