Home
There is no returning home.
You don’t prepare for that
Because you use all your gas
On Rainier. Eat a plum to see if
Still-life is still love back home.
*
Having looked back on
Thousand plus pictures,
Only four having us all
Adequately agape
To the scene, I realize
I never held the same
Standard for the
Little-something poems
Here on the farm.
Too-scrutinized vacations
Make shifty proverbs.
Too-tended gardens
Guzzle middle age.
*
I can’t find myself
Between the computer
Heating up
On my lap, the Massachusetts
Bees on the Massachusetts
Goldenrod, and wanting
To sleep on the beach with you
Where we get caught
With a pornography of sand
In all our clothes.
*
Moments in
Reading that
Over-soften
A butter-battered
Soul, like
A psychedelic
Public lavender
Bath at noon.
Or like listening
To Beethoven’s
Harp quartet
Underwater.
The heat here bolts
Fall cilantro.
Daydrifts dream back
On the Bainbridge ferry,
Pontoon nap,
That old occult
Feeling.
*
My daughter draws
In a coloring book
Her own drawings
On top of someone else’s.
Calls this one vacation
But in her occasional
Deep unexpected voice
So its palimpsest
Fugues with humor.
*
Harmless and sobering,
The morning glory way late
Vining on the coop door
For late August.
It’s an insult nature would suggest
We haven’t missed anything.
*
A mock epic and a story of a shoelace.
The narrative microscope finds a germ
On the lapel of the funny flight attendant
Who I’m sure confuses our children
And other first-time flyers.
Wipe off the headphones the kids use
On the plane. Have a cookie. Buy some milk.
*
She didn’t mean anything by it, your mom,
When she thought your Massachusetts
Garden lush. It was you yourself
That heard it as an insult, quiet and humming.
*
Another way we should get
Ourselves back out there: this
Most recent gen of chickens
Sure are rain chickens. Hours
In the wood chips for a worm,
Molted feathers wetted down.
I know you would also dream
The scene in Forks.
*
Little Issa wakes me this morning
In the heavy sweat wet bed of summer’s
Last returns, to tell me she always wanted
To have a bed where mama was here
And pop was here and she was in the middle,
Just like on vacation. It’s disgusting hot
How she’s laying on me.
Heaped cut wet grasses turn to slime.
*
Farm games of feeding feeding-birds
Through the picture window.
The same was more fun at Sequim cabin.
*
Some other things are hard to explain
Too: notice I haven’t worn
Any of the clothes I had
Out west since we’re home,
Days, weeks, or months now.
*
Returns home,
Many returns home.
These things
Take up real estate
In the head.
Returns home:
Let’s say
They’re burst-written
In a day,
It’s other things
That make
Something daily
I have to return to.
A crick in the neck
From even
The good pillow.
*
A quick pull-off on the way home,
Little Issa half-asleep,
From the orchard for early apples
We failed to plant in ours.
Sops of Wine and what they call
Yellow Transparent but I’m sure are
Lodi. Whatever. A quick cobbler
Heavy drawn with butter and oats
Where we’d rather measure
Ourselves next to Pacific maidenhair fern.
Some more cream please. Some salt.
*
If we find ourselves making postcards
Forever. If we find ourselves putting
Stamps on any of our drawings. And this one,
Three green twiggy zigs and a blue circle.
The best way to make sure we don’t chuck it someday
Is to not hang it on the fridge. Tuck it in,
Here, in A Run of Jacks. Please:
I don’t want to throw just this one out.
*
I admit: sleeping
On your pillow
Again is kinda nice,
Your dirty laundry,
Love, smells better
Than even before,
Enriched with memory
Of many lusts, some
That belong to us.
*
The challenge that walking now
Is different. The wheelbarrow
Is lighter and the hills roll themselves up,
Bake down like a cookie, and call
Themselves mountains.
The highest point in Massachusetts
Is a well-populated monument. This high
Is nowhere out west, where Muir left
Indissoluble pieces of himself
We tried in earnest to pocket.
*
The van has Rhode Island beach sand
From six months ago.
The driftwood we stole
From the most inland cottage—
It was already stolen once—
Looks ridiculous but not ignored
On the dusty screen porch.
There is a tuft of fur
On a hole in the wire.
Looks like squirrel?
*
A month from now the last chicken
From our first generation of hens
Will die calm in the corner of the coop
Some evening when everyone has a cold.
The younger girls won’t even peck at her.
Here love, a hand
Of strong-going goldenrod for the grave.
*
Need it be said: the head dazes thinking,
Homestead swim holes have been knocked out
Of the heart’s emotional clenches, the farm
Does not seem so inspired, Massachusetts
Is for sleepwalkers, and I dream of loving you:
Marissa, rain-soaked, naked, drinking coffee
On the porch, dawn spent looking for whales,
Finding an orgy of fog. Will you know I mean
To speak the big love when I say I don’t much know
Anymore, where to return to when called home.
Thank you for wanting a nap right now.
*
The kids have to go back to school, sweet stings
Need cream. The flowers have to fade, and then
To reimage.
*
New vernacular: It’s no Forks.
It’s no Forks here without you.
I love you like Forks.
David Bartone is the author of Practice on Mountains (Sawtooth Prize for Poetry, Ahsahta Press).
