Monster spruce blocking sandy shores
Where are you, Ocean?
We have come home to haunt our houses
Hear the snicker?

Long overdue tidewaters beach their smiles
The old road loops around
Trails remain buried under devils clubs Potter
Taverns empty
Friend are lost, but not forgotten

Drawbridge begs we return again
Ghosts passing upon rusty tire whine of line
Steel grating grooves fill in the fit
Timeless wallow - well worn
Concrete frost heave illusions merge
Cableway arches prevailed in our absence

Row houses dot the blocks
Their boardwalk railings testify on our behalf
We were here!
Stairs staggering
"Shifty eyes"
Dial up the names and dates
10th and J street

To be among them once more, all together
Salute - bottles clink
Homeward
Found


A/Note,
Poem trivia: Devils clubs - Thick brush that grows in Alaska and Washington in heavily wooded areas. "Potter" The name of the family who purchased our home place forty years ago. My father and I still think of it as, our place...lol!

Together, he and I went back recently to take a peek at their progress. Much to my surprise and delight my childhood friend, will be inheriting the entire place. I hadn't seen her in forty years. Once she remembered "who I was" she said, "the trails are gone."
She and I raced our horses down trails, over logs, through deep forest, in our grade school years, on the same paths - my father, his father and his grandfather had ridden, during their youth. This property has been vacant since we moved away. The timber remains. It was unbelievable to return after all these years, to find it, very much, unchanged. Similar (undeveloped) it has remained, for many generations. In this modern day and age, how crazy cool (unheard of) is that!