​Why Would You Want To Move 3,003 Miles to Vermont? 


Someone had to ask. So, many did. 
From a place as perfect as Oregon. 
Yes, I know about Lyme’s disease,
shots for dogs but not for people,
the yuck pinch-it blood-swell of ticks.  
Cold clamps bitter, unrelenting, certain.
They say the state has four seasons: freezing
at the start, thaw to mud, then bugs,
and leaves that draw peepers up north
with their cars that clog the freeways. 

Left coast to join lefties on the east side. 
Feel the Bern. First state to legalize
gay marriage. The legislature says yes
to marijuana. First ski lift. Ethan Allen
had the gall to attack Montreal. 

I know trees and woods. I’ve seen maple
in pipelines, creamees, bacon and cotton candy.  
Let me sniff steam in the maple sugar shack. 
Let me see the tom with his turkey harem 
high-stepping over browned-out pasture. 
Or hear the loons moan and trill up at Noyes Pond. 
Watch the males offer red eyes to the girls.

As for sub-zero’s, I’ve got stoves, 
fleeces, flannel, down, and duvets. 
As snow tiptoes in on wind, awe
is rain turned to crystal. Rain to skate on.

I have nowhere I have to go, wrapped up 
with poems of the palace women of China,
Rilke, Szymborska, a vast library lugged
from Stafford to Frost.  

I can migrate from Tillamook  
to Cabot cheese. I believe
in creatures of the deep, Champ. 
I may shoo away the beavers
chewing down my peninsula. 

Vermont is where my daughter is. The girl 
who brought home the first deer of the season
while the men went up north to deer camp.
She tagged unblemished road kill,
freshest deer the butcher ever skinned.    





The Value of a Home


Pinpointing what it’s worth, when
there’s a place where dog pee stained
the fir floor black, where someone
else’s child chiseled nonsense
on the inside of a closet door,
where your mutt scratched up
another door trying to get out
of the laundry room, our love
making by the fireplace, the
Christmas tree corner with green
lights, a deck where poetry flowed
into the woods, enough water
in the creek it might be crying.   

Am I forgetting the spot
on the floral rug where we married? 
Of course not, but in the midst of figuring
amenities (solar panels, a view to the woods,
rooms of light and the owl sounds at night),
come to mind cardboard under church awnings,
flapping tents in dry-wind camps, 
but you knew I’d go there, didn’t you? 
To the hives, caves, burrows,
shells, hollows, where they have to take you in
until time doesn’t want you anymore. 
Some appraiser with a clipboard 
demands you move on, go west, 
or follow the food and only in dreams
can you go back and even then
everything has changed.

This poem is being featured in a juried multimedia exhibition called Migration Stories (in conjunction with World Refugee Day) at the Multnomah Art Center in Portland for the month of June.​