Image 1 of 2
Image 2 of 2
Text: Poem by Maureen Tolman Flannery
Early morning thunder
rumbles in the east like hunger.
Child of a troubled marriage,
he lies upstairs in the farmhouse bed plodding through wonder,
looking for the flattened penny
that derailed the train,
trying to reconnect the chain of raised voices,
ascertain some moment of choice,
like a bonfire leapt across on
midsummer’s midnight,
some dark bargain struck with destiny,
a roadhouse on his family’s track
that turned them---
with no hope of ever turning back--
toward the childhood of his memory
(with its drought dry truth)
and away from the one
his well-meant parents had set out for,
one long forgotten
spring day
in their youth.
