How I Arrive

Past the perpetual yard sales and the acrid tang of goats in a pen, tired mailboxes leaning towards gravel roadsides with their knock and ping percussion of dancing stones and transparent veils of resurrected dust, past the fallen limbs of last winter, by summer houses dark now and closed like the petals of August blooms, by the swoop of low crows and high, wide formations of geese, fields wearing lady's mantle edges, woodpecker tappings, the hesitancy of deer, mountains that slope softly into valleys like shoulders in sleep, front steps littered with leaves, small hills of unstacked cordwood, a thirsty visitor leaning to collect cold spring water in a plastic jug and hardy swimmers at the pond's edge wrapped in towels of red and blue. Today is setting in the rear view mirror, her soft curtain rising and closing, and with every passing mile I arrive both closer and father away from what's familiar.