FPE 9: When Desert Roads End In Maine

When Desert Roads End In Maine

I imagined
While you were speeding down that last stretch
Of straight desert road
My parents sitting quietly back up in Maine
Mom wearing a wig of curly gray locks
While sipping tea around a glass table
I saw in an airplane magazine last time we flew home

And it's funny that
As I should think to mention all of this to you
Dad should call
To tell me plans of an addition
I laughed as I read between each pause he took
The description of the perfect place
For them to grow old
Watching birds
Eating scones
Sipping teas

"Son," Dad said near the end of our call, "Do you remember that glass table you showed us when you came home for Christmas this year so your mother wants that glass table and I was thinking about how we have not seen you in almost a year the addition should be ready but I don't know if getting the table for her birthday or are we going to have to wait another year before you can help me build the addition just like the glass table you showed us on the computer is dead and I was hoping that if you come home we can set up the table late Christmas eve and it would be great if you were here for her birthday but the table might be a better Christmas present and a new computer would work if you remember family first like I have come to like your mother's scones."

When we stopped here
You needing to go to the restroom
I called Aubrey and I asked
"Could you pick me up at the airport?"
"Yes"
When she told me Andrew had something to tell me about his son
I stayed silent
Afraid to miss them both
Then she asked if I had talked to Dad or Mom
We laughed about Dad and the scones Mom finally got him to like
He used to feed them to the birds
One of the many things we called
"Our little secret"

And it was when you walked out of the rest room
Flipping back your hair
Laughing about how I'm a camel
While buying another bottle of water
That I realized how badly I try to remember that yellow house
Over looking what's now a vague pond
Where I think Dad taught me to skate
Where I lost at least thirty pucks to the snow
Where I have my best memories of the Dog
I buried somewhere in the woods last year
And though I was there when we painted my yellow house
Red
I can feel the memories fading away
Like my parents
And my brother
My sister seems to hold onto me
Like I hold onto the memories of the yellow house
Where Mom and Dad plan to grow old
Watching birds
Eating scones
Sipping teas
Thinking I'm the one who needs to be taken care of
While they tell you stories of changing my dippers
I worry soon we'll be changing theirs
And I wish this Desert road would end back up in Maine
Not by the Grand Cannon where we plan to descend
Your dream landscape to paint
I'll write another poem
About the house in Maine
I can't help but call
Yellow

-M. Chase Whittemore

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• poetry

[fridaypoetry0001]

Well I tried to do something different with this video, but I can't seem to get the sound to work right on it. I guess next week I will simply post as I have done before, looking into the camera.

[iabhornc]

Very nice. I'd like to see good-for-nothing BIGOT North Carolina and BIGOT Texas top that. Maine is very nice and not tropical where ppl. are so cranky. The North rocks.