“The red U-Haul” my uncle instructed to the gas station shopkeeper. On the way out I grabbed a mars bar because why not. “Oh come on Logan I already paid” my uncle skwelled at me; the gas station keeper was my hero at this point “ Hey young lady don’t worry the mars bar; it is on the house!” Truly my hero.

Now, I'm in the U-Haul and listening to my favorite album which is Sunset Season by Conan Gray- highly recommend by the way- while I'm glaring out into lakes and greenery. I'm just getting excited to move in with my mom after 5 years. I finally get to see her …...

She ….um...is coming out of prison today and I'm happy to see her but I don't want her to feel bad about missing out on my life. I want her to know that we should all start fresh. Together. My mom, my uncle and I will live in a small apartment in Devil's Lake, North Dakota. My uncle already brought most of our stuff there.

“OK Logan are you ready?” my uncle asked, while we were pulling into the police department.

"Yeah I want to see her” I responded.

When she freely walked out of the rusted metal barred gate, I ran so fast I could hear the wind pass by me.

“Logan!” she screamed with joy and disappointment to herself.

It’s never too late

To start again

For dreams don’t carry

Expiration dates

A new beginning isn’t

Changing your past

It’s about learning

From your mistakes

Instead of turning the page

Or opening another chapter

Take a leap of faith

And write a brand new book

When life gives you lemons

Don’t make lemonade

Take out the seeds

And grow a tree

Don’t ever be afraid

To venture into the unknown

Because in order to fly

You have to take off

Beginnings are a start, always new

Waiting to start life afresh

Because I was flooded with thoughts, like a water balloon

Couldn’t really seek an outlet, to breakthrough

But the only way, that remained

Was to start over all again

Made many resolutions

Took many promises

Broke many thoughts

Just to see a new dream

A new beginning.

But this beginning was completely different,

It was a beginning never noticed before

It was so new to humankind

Masks, distancing, sanitizers, tissues

It wasn’t so worse

After a loss of about half a year

Being confined indoors

Led me to think, of an alternate reality

Of a new life

When the sun will rise again,

It will be a new day, again

It will be a new beginning.

I

In my beginning is my end. In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place

Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth

Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,

Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

Houses live and die: there is a time for building

And a time for living and for generation

And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane

And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots

And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls

Across the open field, leaving the deep lane

Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,

Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,

And the deep lane insists on the direction

Into the village, in the electric heat

Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light

Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.

The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.

Wait for the early owl.

In that open field

If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,

On a summer midnight, you can hear the music

Of the weak pipe and the little drum

And see them dancing around the bonfire

The association of man and woman

In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—

A dignified and commodiois sacrament.

Two and two, necessarye coniunction,

Holding eche other by the hand or the arm

Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire

Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,

Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter

Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,

Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth

Mirth of those long since under earth

Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,

Keeping the rhythm in their dancing

As in their living in the living seasons

The time of the seasons and the constellations

The time of milking and the time of harvest

The time of the coupling of man and woman

And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.

Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

Dawn points, and another day

Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind

Wrinkles and slides. I am here

Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

scurried around a classroom papered with poems.

Even the ceiling, pink and orange quilts of phrase…

they introduced one another, perched on a tiny stage

to read their work, blessed their teacher who

encouraged them to stretch, wouldn’t let their parents

attend the reading because parents might criticize,

believed in the third and fourth eyes, the eyes in

the undersides of leaves, the polar bears a thousand miles north,

and sprouts of grass under the snow. They knew their poems

were glorious, that second-graders could write better

than third or fourth, because of what happened

on down the road, the measuring sticks

that came out of nowhere, poking and channeling

the view, the way fences broke up winter,

or driveways separated the smooth white sheets

birds wrote on with their feet.

I love all films that start with rain:

rain, braiding a windowpane

or darkening a hung-out dress

or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour

right through the empty script and score

before the act, before the blame,

before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone

beside a silent telephone

or the dress lies ruined on the grass

or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source

along their fatal watercourse.

However bad or overlong

such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through

or when the boom dips into view

or when her speech starts to betray

its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold

on a starlit gutter, running gold

with the neon drugstore sign

and I'd read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—

all was washed clean with the flood

we rose up from the falling waters

the fallen rain's own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

Dad on bench, looking at his phone

Son on bank, sitting on his own

Little daughter riding her bike

up and down

up and down

up and down