Road Home

These are things I've been wanting to tell you (1996)

I don't give a shit about chipolte sauce.
I don't care where these peppers are grown
or special techniques best chefs use
to reduce heat and remove seeds,
to enhance that smoky flavor
so reminiscent of Indian fires,
which neither you nor I have ever smelled.

What I care about,
the only thing I've ever god damned cared about,
is the one tiny droplet of sienna cream
on the edge of your red lips, smiling.

And I only pretend to believe that Miller Lite is piss
and the only beer I'll ever drink again,
ever, ever in my entire life is some micro-brewed amber ale
made with Austrian hops and spring Canadian snowmelt,
produced only in limited quantities, but by some miracle
is available in Albertsons throughout the South.

But I told you the truth
when I said the butterfly
that paused, migrating North,
on the empty ice chest
three days after our spring party
made me see the unfolding joy of our life together.

And I couldn't give a flying fuck
about fabrics and furniture,
about what Martha Stewart or Architectural Design
would do with our space,
about how angels, or was it gargoyles, are in or out,
about how you want a room that Henryk Gorecki,
not Philip Glass, could settle into,
about how you just can't go to the Pottery Barn
now that they've opened a store in our podunk town

I just want to hear once more the Shaker tune
you hummed to yourself in sunlight,
holding from your garden a single rose,
wearing those stupid green plastic clogs
that you mailordered from Smith and Hawken.