Saturday Somewhere by Ronald Moran

Now my palladium window is blocked by

                        a ferocious oak,

and my lawn is compromised to its roots

                        by its

unwitting partner, a resident mole, as if

                        they schemed

 

to discredit any hope for Yard of the Month

                        in my

cardboard neighborhood, which, of course,

                        I love––

my Jane having lived here for eight years––

                        and

 

on this Saturday, my weekend plans look like

                        a tabula rasa.

After so many years alone, you'd think,

                        Hey Ron,

get over it, accept it, get on with your life,

                        to which

 

my response is, What, after my 80 years?

                        I still

dream of my Jane, not in my usual dark

                        mode,

but, ordinarily, my wanting to get there

                        with her,

 

but the elevators don't work, the commuter

                        trains

have closed their doors, yet we are ready

                        to embark

on an adventure to a land we do not know

                        but hope to.

Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review, Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in thirteen books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press published his Eye of the World in the spring of 2016. He has won a number of awards for his writing. He will be inaugurated into Clemson University's AAH Hall of Fame this spring.