Kindred Thoughts

Bent grass weeps beneath the weight of winter's
icy stride, and I am here, inside, nearly
alone, thinking thoughts aplenty.
It should be of no surprise, then, that some of them
turn toward my Andover kin, to my uncle and my aunt,
for to arrest such considerations would ransom my reward.
Ideas that are as new as incandescence,
or as ancient as the brontosaurus
cautiously peering out across tropical savanna.

My thoughts dry dishes edged in blue
and tie the laces of light brown shoes,
they frame the steaming locomotive bridged high
above lakeside lowlands
where steel mills once blanketed the sky
with billowing smoke for miles, they embrace
the weathered and aging docks
that dot the watery bays where fishermen
set out with tackle and hardiness and hope.

I think of Center Road, of azaleas
and the thorny rose, of an added porch
carefully crafted with skilled hands and canopied
against a blazing sun.  And I study in hospitality,
when the taste of a thick steak yet plays
symphonic melodies on surfaces of mouth and tongue.
Notions rain as if mountain shadows are non-existent,
as if last night's dream kneads muscles in an aching neck.

Orange and scarlet flowers burst to life
from fragile, white glass, and there a butterfly alights,
delicate, deliberate, with quivering wings and beating heart.
It does not think, yet it lives,
and is partaking of the vast and ancient rhythms
coursing through us all.  It is to weep, it is to laugh,
it is to appreciate and to love.  For my uncle and my aunt,
for both of you, all my best hopes, all my
best dreams, all my best thoughts.