Visual
Poetry
I
began this day like any other, up before the sun and helping everyone
prepare for their day. I scraped ice off of the car windows and
wrasteled toddlers into their seats. Finally on the road to preschool
I got into a zone where the details and hassels of life faded away.
I zeroed in on my surroundings and this is what I saw.
We
live in a small town carved out of the middle of the Croatan National
Forest. I drove along the winding road lined with a virtual wall of
forest impregnated with a foggy mist. I miss the secure feeling of
being surrounded by the mountains, but the forest and the fog
embraced me this morning. All along the long country road, past the
solitary mail boxes, one of which used a small palm tree as its post.
Past the red and white farm house next door to a house that is
trying its hardest to return to the earth from wence it appears to
have come. Past a lone chicken clucking on the sandy shoulder, then
left at the once white southern style church with above ground
crypts. When I reach the little house that is being reclaimed by the
woods, left again. I always pause and wonder about this house that
the trees have overtaken. They grow up through the roof and chimney,
their limbs burst through the windows. I wonder who once lived there
and why they left their home. I wonder about the many happy nights
the family must have spent next to the hearth cooking over an open
fire. I always imagine that they were happy, in a little house in
the middle of the woods, because I think I would be happy there too.
Jennifer
22
January 2015
