At night from the tired grey couch,
or in the white chairs out back
when it was warm and clear,
we talked of other places: Scotland,
the Badlands, maybe Charleston.
For weeks we calculated mileage
and lodging costs, how many days
of care for the dogs, how many hours
in the car our five-year-old could tolerate.
Most evenings, we don’t see many
stars from our city backyard,
but we counted those too:
sometimes reaching the teens
in our slice of navy between
houses and power lines.
As spring settled into itself,
still our plans meandered, doubled back
like the way we walked the river:
marsh marigolds awaking the forest
floor, Virginia bluebells lounging
beneath generations of buckeyes.
Our daughter hopping from rock to rock
across the shallows. Shards of shale
that snapped under our steps
as we followed the narrow paths,
as other people’s off-leash dogs
sped along the bank,
worshipping a thousand scents
I’ll never name or trace. I breathed
them in anyway. I thought,
What extravagance. Not to need
an escape from this life to feel free.
