Taking a suite in that once-grand hotel, shabby now,
we could have been watching a home movie,
ourselves years ago. Vacation town – the return.

The first day started sunny, then grew stormy.
Pentecostals arrived by bus. The driver unloaded
bright luggage, brass instruments. Next, the rain.

Water poured from ceilings, from power sockets,
the ornate door fittings. Why all that laundry
on the veranda? You bolted to retrieve it. 

But what stays clearest is our drive through apple orchards,
then along the shoreline, boats docked at a jetty,
headlands opening into bays, until we reached

farm sheds, the mission, the well-kept lighthouse.
Of ourselves, there’s so much we discover
sharing adventures, driving, saying almost nothing.

Gratitude flickers like an old chandelier.
Houses disappear, dirt roads flatten out,
then we’re back on the highway, years flying by.

 

Michael Mintrom lives in Melbourne, Australia. His poems have recently appeared in journals including Blue Mountain Review, Consequences Forum, Main Street Rag, Midwest Zen, and Stone Poetry Quarterly.