THINKING MYSELF HOME

The drive home to SW Georgia gets longer and longer, no matter much Sugarland I sing along with on the cd player or how many goosebumps I cultivate while listening to Roderigo's Concierto de Aranjuez on the fm station. (Or Rusalka's Hymn to the Moon, after which I pledge undying devotion to Antonin Dvorak) Thus, this poem, which seems especially apropos, considering I had to head for the flatlands on Monday before the snowstorm hit.


Thinking Myself Home

I have to look up and over the trees
all the way to the mountains I see in the distance,

then hang a left soon as I get there,
thinking my way down the Blue Ridge

and into the piedmont just south
of Atlanta. From there it's a straight

shoot to home,
if I still want to go, which I do

because this is the best way,
by stealth, no one knows I am coming,

no cake to be baked,
and my mother not worrying most of her day

by the telephone, clearly imagining
fifty car pileups,

the ambulance wailing, the whole bloody
nine miles of interstate closed

for the body count.
No idle comments about my new haircut,

my extra pounds. I could be dust
on the air or a bright stab of light passing through.

I don't have to stay long.
I can leave when I want to, without feeling guilty

when I see my father's eyes squinching
back tears as I drive away.

Hello and goodbye. That's it.
And I'm back

in my bedroom that faces south into the side
of these trees, with the radio on

warning Traveler's Advisory. Wrecking-ball hailstones.
King Kong tornado. Megaton Blizzard.

A forecast so unimaginably bad, only a fool
would drive home in this kind of weather.

Trying to Get Back Home

It's been a week since I've been back home in the mountains. Getting here wasn't, shall we say, a walk in the garden. An hour from Cullowhee, I had a flat tire. I was listening hard to Sugarland on my cd player and then noticed another sound, something coming from the right side of the car, definitely not an accompaniment to Jennifer Nettles singing "Down in Mississippi and Up to No Good." Smell of hot rubber. Whoa. I pulled off at Grover's food store in Wiley, GA, opened the door fearfully, and there it was. A flat front tire. Nothing to do but go inside the store, where the only inhabitant, the woman who kept the cash register, was out back having a smoke. Man, I wanted one. NEEDED one. My nerves were shot about as bad as my front tire.

She came back inside and told me to call Wiley Tire, which I did, after she kindly opened the phone book to their ad. The really nice woman on the line said she'd send someone out in just a few minutes. So, yes, I bought a pack of cigarettes (lord, they cost a lot more than they used to!) and the woman holding down the store and I stood outside having a cigarette. (Who knows how many it had been for her already that day. It was the first one I'd had in about 30 years, so it went to my head real fast.) Twenty minutes later, a cute young man drove up and put my spare on, after which I followed him about two miles down the highway to Wiley Tire, and within half an hour, and one more cigarette, later, I was back on the road. But no more Sugarland this time. I kept the window down and listened to the road noise.

In Clayton, traffic was backed up, all of us having to merge left because of a huge smash-up between an SUV and a pick-up. I was stuck in the right hand lane but was so relieved to have my wheels again that I didn't get upset about it. I even looked up at the school bus on my left and waved back to a little boy who looked like he was gonna grow up to be a real hell-raiser.

I was so exhausted and wrung out by the time I pulled up in our driveway, to the greeting of five happy dogs, that I didn't even walk out to the garden. I let that wait till the next morning.

First thing I saw, with extreme gratitude, was the laurel just beyond the garden.



Then when I looked up, there was the sky, with sun just beginning to hit the treeline.



And the garden! Just look at the lettuce. My daughter's guinea pig will be happy--and lucky--to get some of this.



The broccoli's not bad either.



And there at the edge of the garden, our first peony bud. I gave thanks to the Peony Goddess for bringing me back home safely.