Susquehanna County

I have seen your front porches

Your piles of blue stone

 I have seen just a slip of your skin

      And it is beautiful

You

Are beautiful.

Tonight, however, you are rolling greens and specks of water

You are a row of white pinwheels

Children’s toys

Too small, even, for my fingers

I parted seas to find you

You welcomed me with Blue Shadow Ridges and matchstick trees

Waiting to be lit by the cool breeze of autumn

A breeze that felt like winter while crossing those lines

The way tow straps stretch across the beds of pickup trucks

     Holding lives in place

My life, is not a place

It is a truck bed

And unfinished home built by unfinished people

A plane

A book by an old friend

A free drink

A lake, so large, it looks like an ocean

Even from a distance

From the ticking of twenty two hours

Tonight, I am alongside the contrails of parallel stories

Alongside a thin blue line between this evening’s floor

     That is littered with golden spiders

And God’s ceiling

 I don’t think so, just endless questions

The answer is always home, wherever I may lie

And soon, that will be with you again, Susquehanna County

     Save for me your blue stone sunset

     Your north eastern plantation porches

     Save for me your matchstick fires, your rains and your rolling thunder

Save for me a place in your bosom