Lilting

To my ears, this is one of the most perfect songs I've heard in my brief twenty years.

 

"Colours" by Donovan, 1968 version

It reminds me of summer mornings at my folks' place. Waking up, you can look out over the low sun at cornfields and forests and wide-open skies that just don't exist in the same way in eastern Massachusetts. But I should let the music speak for itself.

And because I've been sappy and nostalgic recently, here is a poem that I wrote this time last year. It doesn't much align with that Donovan song with regards to tone or feeling, but I'm quasi-proud of it.

***

"York, Pennsylvania"

A space that God forgot,
where the highest point—
a Baptist steeple—
looms through the Greyhound window.
Apathetic rowhouses
shrug together in weathered shambles,
peeking up
at our cheap
metal carpet ride.
Looking for America,
we’d only found shadows on our eyes. 

Everyone else
disembarks when we brake for cigarettes.
Solitary, I sit and look out
at the deserted bus terminal:
stale smoke hanging heavy
from the barbed metal roof. 

Breaking loose,
we meander back to the interstate.
The roadside grass is preparing
to blur once again
in my mottled, personal pane.
Then, a single frantic shout
as a detached traveler begins
to seize
catty-cornered behind me. 

I am helpless—
We withdraw from the crumbling asphalt
to stop
and wait.