Drive Safe

Safe home. Homey, humble
Sometimes earnest, sometimes fierce,

Chunked phrases from which we build
The pre-fab conversation

Of modular social lives.
Enough is enough, we say,

Although it's not true enough.
I sat while you collected

Wild geraniums, but then
I couldn't drive fast enough

For you to the library
And you had no patience left

To listen to anything.
Then I waited once again

As you returned your
Growing away present

To the kindly couple
Who tolerated our toddler

And embraced her fun and funny
Ways the way they had embraced

The broader world all their long
And genuinely helpful lives.

And then I watched out
Of their picture window,

Out of the corner of my eye
In the muddled middle of small

Talk about the end--the end
Of this beginning we'd made

To a friendship now we were
Moving again, hundreds of miles,

The end to our time in this valley,
The end to meditation,

And I scribbled a poem in pencil
While everyone chatted and waited

And I left it on the table. Enough.
Never enough. Drive safely. Safe home.