VT

vermont is a half-finished poem with all the lines scratched out.

grandfathers who’ve lived here their whole lives still talk of leaving,

of turquoise florida gulfs and california summer sun. they swear

up and down they’ll move next winter, fiddlehead beer cans sloshing, 

fingers crossed behind their back.

vermont is a faded jam jar label that used to know the meaning of it all.

we’ve learnt about our lake in every science class we’ve ever had because it’s

half in new york but all of vermont really. it’s been seven years of that

but somehow we still like to watch the autumn sunsets sparkle 

& disappear behind the deep curtains of blue.

vermont is hissing static on the radio.

the temperatures always seem to drop

before we can notice it’s november and the trees are bare

and the geese are gone and that probably ought to mean something

but i’m not sure what it is. it’s dark in the mornings, goodbye fall.

vermont is a buckling highway overgrown with goldenrod.

at five the only worlds i knew were my grandparents’ house

(five and a half hours down the road), vermont,

and the grocery store. at twelve i’ve leaped clear over the atlantic

twice but this earth is still shaped like home.

vermont is thrush-song in summer meadows.

the rain wanders gaily through the marshes, trailing his fingers

through the sounds the reeds make in the downpour. when

he hears the leaves are changing he rushes north

to camel’s hump where the view is indeed a burnished bronze.

vermont is a picture colored in bright green crayon.

we are the green mountain state & proud

of it but when the sun peeks above the horizon cerulean

(not sage) radiates across the peaks,

soft rolling hills bluer than the lake champlain-shaped sky.

vermont is a maple-black raspberry twist in a big waffle cone.

my cousins don’t understand vermonter logic, pointing

at menus saying isn’t that just soft serve? & while they contain 

reddish-gold multitudes too they are not from here and i have to ask:

since when does soft serve taste anything like this?

vermont is maple sugaring season.

and while march grows ever more indecisive,

a restless lover who can’t decide between snow & the crocuses out in the woods,

we fall head over heels for the blue lines crisscrossing

our heart/state, plastic arteries pumping out our sticky-sweet lifeblood.

vermont is the end of october and the beginning of spring.

coming home to vermont is like having the landscape remember you

for the person you were in the first moment you ever returned –

a child, restless in the back seat, eyes wide at the

soft green & suddenly familiar view.

vermont is the truth of small towns.

i live in the biggest city in the state and i am still from the middle of nowhere.

i went to a stadium once that seated more than the population 

of burlington and i felt very small. i am like the country mouse in that old fairytale: 

this is enough for me.

vermont is the pause between the phrase and the chorus.

somehow we talk fast and slow here, like a waterfall

tumbling against the rocks, rushing & beautiful & sounding like southern mass.

we leave our t’s behind in our haste; we have no need for them.

vermont is stick season.

and you’re not really from here if you don’t know all the words –

scream them out the bus windows when it comes on the radio, the only song

that mentions us, get excited, november sun

slanting through the blinds like a guitar-heavy tune.

vermont is the very first snow.

it whispers down from the thick clouds, settling on the cornfields 

& the rooftops like a cobweb blanket. pure white & it returns every year.

let’s make snow angels, let’s go skiing, let’s be childish today

as the world goes to bed. we’re vermonters, our world is the snow.

vermont is nature poetry.

vermont is church street cobblestones.

vermont is protesting at the street corners.

vermont is golden sunlight.

vermont is public libraries & community theater.

vermont is dairy farming.

vermont is the white tips of the green mountains.

vermont is half my head and all my heart.

vermont is my sixty-four-year-old house.

vermont is the build-up and the fading away.

vermont is a commitment to the small and the genuine.

vermont is a place where the dirt roads lead to not just a destination but a home.

vermont is my home.

vermont is itself

and we are vermont.