1955
It seems like a dream now,
Or maybe it really was a dream.
Rolling slow but steady
up the vast hill of summer to the east,
My mother still learning to drive,
That old gray Nash like a huge gunmetal gray bug
Fighting the weight of gravity and time,
Lugging upward past the golden wheat field,
Heads of grain combed gently by the breeze
Under a hot late afternoon August sun.
Shimmering blue sky
Beckoning us up a few hundred feet
Toward its narrow streaming ripples of cloud
Dancing slowly, hypnotically
To the song of summer.
No memory of where we went,
But back again a few brief minutes later,
Down the hill, into the copper sunlight
Gleaming on distant mountains
Down, down into deeper warmth,
Rolling us back toward our friendly rural corner,
The old Nash aglow in the rays
Of almost-sunset,
feeling the grace of gravity
And home.
