A Landscape

Mountains were the easiest to draw.
Pen some bendy lines and
Appalachia unfolded before you.
A few more squiggles:
It was snowing just last week.

Trees—
Evergreens, not otherwise—
Were easy as well.
Get two lightning bolts
Charging away from each other,
Then have them strike
A straight line.
You’ve a novice coppice,
A cursory nursery.

Too, of course, a house:
Take one square,
Plus, one triangle,
Plus, one rectangle;
Add more boxes with crosses,
So we can see out,
And some threes and a seven,
So we don’t freeze.

I wanted
So much
To live there,

Surrounded by the still and the cold--
Someday hanging curtains,
Building a fence--

Not bothered by bedtimes,
Or schoolrooms,
Or people,
Or anything I didn’t know
How to draw.

Angel Fire, NM
2016