At Home

I've been at home in Indiana flatland:
productive farms,
summer sweat and its dread humidity,
winter snow and ice;

at home in California:
olives and figs
and apricots and peaches and plums
and not once snow;

at home among Oregon forests:
winter rain,
clear rivers, blackberries and chickens,
and lumber trucks;

at home, as well, in Utah:
desert land,
canyons and mountains and sand,
Gentiles and Mormons,

and Colorado: wide plains, taller mountains:
and Indians,
Tex-Mex and mining,
and the grandeur of mile high heights;

And, finally, Virginia and Maryland:
where I will die,
still comfortable in myself,
not knowing how
my varied life could have happened.

Enough good luck and health
and sufficient wealth
for housing, children and dogs.

These were the cogs,
apart from my profession,
which seemed to fit
until government outgrew me
in ways so strange
I no longer understood.

Now I'm retired,
like a car that has worn out its tires,
so can read and write
and cuss, if I'm feeling cranky,
otherwise rejoice
that I'm back in a rural town
that's not unlike
the first town that I grew up in.

What's not to like?