I, Away (or Iowa dreams)

1

The heat flamed out, again

And snow blanketed my sleep—

Soft and white and clean

Like iron-worn bottom sheets

Ballooning and billowing

In slow cumulus motion­—

Their warmth whipped and

Flattened all too swiftly,

By hospital corners

Squared away in

My mother’s no-nonsense

Domestic bliss, once pristine,

Then crisply practiced.

2

Layer upon layer piled

Roadside gray where snowplows

Spewed grit, sand, and ice.

April rose raw and sunless,

And dirty drifts packed down

Into rough-hewn walls

My shovel could not breach.

Easter carols rang foreign,

And the concrete birdbath

Brimmed with stone water.

I wandered where prairies rolled,

Where the sod broke neatly

In prized rectangular patches

Months after my highlander

Father planted green beans

In crooked red clay rows

Before Good Friday thundered.

Here in the level lands,

My pocket-tucked seeds yearned

To burrow on Mother’s Day,

When nosegays of pink peonies

Flirted their ruffled skirts.

3

But the cold crept me awake,

And I took a bundled turn

In the neighbor’s garden.

The cypress moon gate shone

Silver, cooling bronze firedogs

Fiercely guarding each side.

My dim fingers unhooked the latch­—

A tiny click in the silence­.

The arbor and trellis showed

Their perpendicular bones.

A white-barked birch ghosted

The side yard, where large flakes

Muffled needle-thin bird tracks.

Bits of deep-green foliage pricked

Through smothered hedges.

The wind stormed the copper chimes.

4

I picked and plunged boot deep

Back to my deck and stared

Where winter had long buried

Nannie’s fishnet-mesh tabletop

That once baked on Georgia’s

Lemonade patio days;

The wind had sculpted the snow

In the laps of four ice-cream chairs—

Against their sweetheart backs,

Nannie’s rounded, fat foursome

Greedily played at bridge

For the weekly triumph

Of sweeping penny handfuls

Into dried leather pocketbooks

And smartly snapping them shut.

Nannie harrumphed her partner,

Thelma, who puffed her bosom,

As proud as a ship’s prow:

“For God’s sake, play a spade,

Or we’ll miss the shrimp cocktail.”

I fell for nature’s cheapest trick,

And the thermometer froze, broken.

Note: Originally, this concept appeared as a short prose piece. However, I recast it as a syllabic poem.