A Letter Home

3/24

Gatlinburg,

The Smoky Mountains

Dear Ones - I think we are like

the trees - bare, broken-branched,

trunks green with lichen, holding

the rain before we let it drop;

in this month, shyly unfolding

a few buds, clusters of tiny lime

blossoms in the brown woods. That

we have only to step out of the Park

Vista Hotel atop the mountain, cross

the asphalt parking lot, weave

through the vans and semitrailers

past the swimming pool's Caribbean

blue to the garden, across the small

bridge arched like Monet's, into

the woods, our own wilderness, hollow

and ridge, putting on our first blossoms,

our tentative fists of bud and leaf,

to stand shining in the rain among

our neighbors, some of them always green.