Back in its heyday,
the vinyl gleamed,
the chrome and gilt shone,
and the rugs were plush without remorse.
The women were sucked into girdles,
the men slick and crisp in suits.

It was restrictive and flawed
but contained in a way that you felt
a sense of abandon and freedom
when the lights were low.

Now, there is mold in the shag,
cracks in the chrome, and the beds
are long abandoned.
There are fetid tide pools
where sunbathers used to languish.
The dining hall is full of ghosts.

Some are afraid of the ruins
while some of us cling to them,
feeling the ache of being lost in time,
stained and broken, forgotten.

Lifting off over the field
hosts of wings
beating through flurries,
wind shaking trucks on the highway

cell towers amid the husks
ducks on a frozen pond
wheels and gears pushing
bread and concrete across the state

window dreaming
with glass and distance between
where we want to be,
starlings glide through snow.

‘You make me feel so young,’
he sang with a lilt,
Southern fried and gentrified.
He felt the sun on his face
as he drove with no limits,
a ray of light on a dark highway.

There is so much talk
about what’s for dinner,
yet what we really want to know is
how do light particles really bend
and do we move through them
or do they move through us,
and will there be time to name
all the ways we are delighted
by seeing the one we love
or will we run out of breath
and the remaining endearments
will be left to turn into stars
since what else shines at night
besides things we don’t understand?

It only takes one daydream
inside one man
to make a story made of bits of wind
and some scattered light
that can withstand doubt, night,
and long road trips.

Imagine finding a home in some brambles.
Stumbling upon unexpected pleasure
after years of feeling pricked and bruised,
often wandering in the wrong time and place.

Then tired, a gentler meandering,
somehow steps falling into place;
a new rhythm echoing something eternal,
falling into a thicket of old growth
surprisingly… soft. Home.