Drove five hours out to see my friend Rondalyn at her creekside home in Morgantown this week, came home and went right back out the next day to do some woodworking with my friend Ken at his riverside retreat in Verona. Conflated the trips in this revery at the brink of retirement from my career at VCU:

On the cusp of summer
driving to see friends
out in the mountains:

The pencil thin road
traces a cleavage
of hills like a reclining
body’s contours, so you

roll down the window
reach out and tickle
the breeze with your fingers.

These are ages old ranges
comfy as sofas the plush
deciduous carpet running
right across their peaks.

Old friends, too.
I don’t need my GPS
to find them though
the highway climbs to
rutted trails along
serpentine streams.

They greet me
with hugs and dogs
the whole visit like
those fairy tales where
the wandering and lost

find a hermit and his
hermitage and a way
of living that invites
a raft of questions
about what you do
and why.

We sit in rockers out back
shoulders round
faces creased
sipping whiskey.

Our babble and the stream’s
worrying the puzzle
of worn rock at our feet
as twilight deepens.