april 2002

In Vermont, I think, the Green Mountains

of Vermont (it might have been New Hampshire)

and they were green in fact but also brown

and grey, and a luminous sunset gold.

It was April all up I-95,

warm in the mid-Atlantic and even New England

though we hadn't left the car since Maine

where it was giving up its cold without yet acknowledging summer.

So I was talking about my life

and to someone else, about my life

in these almost green mountains of Vermont (I think)

about growing up in the flat heat of the coastal south

where the only green I ever knew was palm trees and seaweed,

and I never knew this season between summer and cold.

I never knew cold at all, really,

the numbing artistry of icicles or

the slow build of snow.

I said I wanted it, to make it give me its last seasonal ache

and draw its heavy blanket around my shoulders like a cape.

I saw a covered bridge, and because charming

is another word I've never known we drove through it,

just to turn around in the dirt, and through again.

and globe of the sunset was hanging between the peaks

so we turned west, because I wanted to see

the Adirondacks, my mother's mountains.

But we were still in Vermont, far from the New York border,

and the windshield blurred, smearing,

I thought it was rain, it could have been rain,

until I felt it collecting on my fingertips

at 60 miles an hour outside my window

he said it wouldn't stick but it did,

gathering, blanketing the trees

as we drove west, towards New York.