there are no wrong notes
there are no wrong notes,
except chinese food that was left in the fridge
from who knows when.
the spontaneous notes that calm an anxious cat
– that's what you say,
he likes that, those strings you pluck.
crickets peep in the background
as the sun goes down a little later
and the cars whizz a little slower
in these mountains.
almost time to see
the lightning bugs hover
over an abandoned lot
that could have once held a home.
chill out, some man in a hole says
early in the morning,
though i'm not sure i trust him,
with those legs crossed in his dry creek knowledge
from who knows where,
cigar in hand, outstretched kind of way.
can he stand the smoke?
crickets peep some more
and i flashback to before.
i could hear it in the wood paneled walls
of the home we never lived in
but inhabited.
where the waters met the steep hill
and the pine trees clung on
for dear,
dear me,
that's how you know you're home,
when you hear those peepers
and the sun is low.
the natural blue light glints
through the veins around you.
where the bulkhead rusts
in the Probably July sun,
after cutting the grass that never got any shorter,
a scratching under the cotton
–heavy with salt of my sweat–
turns out to be a grasshopper.
that spurns the end of my fascination
with insects.
startled,
i fling the shirt away and run inside,
still feeling those scratchy legs, rough sandpaper,
delicate, but huge in mind.
where the trail cuts through those trees
along the ridge to the beach,
where a small blue fiberglass boat was kept,
set apart from memories dear.
another screen, some other dream,
flat bottom small motor hums through lily pads
and mosquitoes thick like an actual net sitting
on the bottom of that boat.
a beer can and some deet was all there was
in those days.
second floor a blueprint, shaped by plywood frames
and dreams of soft lush carpets.
you were still alive in those wide pine floors
above the laundry with a pork bone and canned tomatoes.
where the windows are partly down
and a slight, finally cool breeze breathes on a bug bite
you're trying not to itch.
there is no radio playing, so all you can hear
is the drone of the highway in the distance,
but not a car in sight.
a petrichor scent preaches to nostrils
after a slow inhale –
but there's not a word for that.
just imagine hot pavement parched from summer sun
faded almost white.
disappearing, in front and behind you,
the horizon, a memory recalled hazily,
from a couch a thousand light years and then some,
rearranged and stretched and scattered
to and fro.
the blonde is still there, and those fingers never forgot,
the blues lovingly crafted and taped.
This is a poem I wrote a few years ago reflecting on times from childhood spent in between the homes we grew up in, in a small unfinished cottage in New Hampshire. Its interspersed with recent memories from Asheville, and was the first poem I wrote in a very long time that brought me out of a drought. I love it. This is the most recent draft of it, after several final drafts, a rejected submission, and a few months of forget.