Vermont 1, or Notes from the Crappy Updater Monkey

Coming home – yes, home, to a place I don’t and have never lived, except here is Dad, in the car, and isn’t that home? Here is Mom, showing me her sourdough starter and asking my advice, though I haven’t made a loaf in months. Here are all the pictures of me, and us, when we were young enough to ignore a camera.

And here is the small coffee shop gig full of family, people who’ve watched me grow from the sidelines of family reunions and college breakfasts and visits to the neighbors. Here is the copy of my new chapbook I left for my parents, the poem with too much sex shyly torn out.

Here are the friends from college, together and joyous, going to see our very favorite band in a small underground venue and singing our way back to my parents’ house. Here we are, up till four when everyone’s got places to be in the morning. Here we are, singing down our bones. Here is my delighted mother, my friends’ joy reflected in her morning face; how sweet these young women, come to fill her house with giggling.

Here is Northampton, my homeland, the place I could feel right even if everyone I loved left. Here is the picnic we had, four hours on the one sunny day all week, just warm enough to sit outside and eat Hungry Ghost rosemary bread with salami and cheese and cookies. Here are my loves, from (literally!) birth through last year, stopping by to say hello and exchange hugs, the headlines of the last few years.

Here is the college, the building I hadn’t stepped foot in since my last final exam. Here are my professors in the lecture hall, and around the dinner table, talking science fiction and Shakespeare and poetry.

I’m showing it all to you, because this is how my Secret Agent Lover Man saw, or might’ve seen it, when he landed in Boston and joined me for a week of touring.

Here is the train slowly leaving Brattleboro, and the man holding the pink-coated baby, who is waving to the train like she’s sad to see us go. Here is my whining heart, a homesick calfling who smells her meadow. Here are promises, whispered to Amherst’s brick and clapboard houses, kisses blown down the road to a future where this is really home again.