Bits of white suspended in solution
swirled past the window after every upheaval.
I found a pencil with a blessing on the side
& decided to start a list
of everywhere I’d been.
I filled three notebooks just with the hiding places
in my parents’ house. At this rate, I realized,
the pencil would be gone
before I made it halfway to the street.
Under my hat my hair continued to grow.
The pilot light burned like an insomniac
in the back of the oven.
I live in an Appalachian hollow in the Juniata watershed of central Pennsylvania, and spend a great deal of time walking in the woods. Here’s a bio. All of my writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For attribution in printed material, my name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact me for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).
Particularly like the hermit’s version of places-one-has-been.