Thursday, March 18th, 2010...2:08 pm

When He Lived on Horsefly Road

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(A feeble attempt at a sestina, for the High Calling Blogs prompt to write a poem about a street name or address.)

That summer, from an upstairs room
in Page House, I wrote him every day
and had to smile when the ink, blue
from my favorite pen, flowed down
obedient to my directing hand forming
“Horsefly Road” on the envelope under his name.
What is a small-town road with such a name
like? Surely made of dirt and gravel, enough room
for a car-width or two plus roadside deer, forming
a lazy curve. At the end of the day
no freeway commuter traffic speeds down
Horsefly Road, only the 1980s model, sky-blue
Dodge Eagle steered by his postmaster dad in blue
jeans and plaid short-sleeves who stops at the name
“Sharman” on a wood-burned sign that swung and hung down
under their mailbox, a postmaster’s mailbox with room
enough for a package delivered midday.
Over the Horsefly Road house, while his mother is forming
dough into cinnamon rolls, always-surprising quick-forming
clouds hide a close-to-the-sun Colorado-blue
sky that can change quick, can change in a day,
in a minute. Under the outside with his dog (her name
was Rosie) getting old, needing warmer space, her own room,
he built her a doghouse that summer, nailing down
doghouse roof shingles, nailing down
leftover carpet inside. Sanding, nailing, forming
for his convalescing dog (a Golden) a room
and not a kennel. She can walk under blue
mornings and midnights tipped with stars named,
each one hung and named. How many more days
at the Horsefly Road home? Soon after, a day
came when I rode on a sled pulled down
Horsefly Road by Sadie (the lab), and my name
was his name now. Sled tracks forming
tracks in the snow, new tracks blue.
Now the grandparents always have room
for our visit days, memories forming
down solid as our children play in blue
sagebrush, and here they always have a room.

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