local_library Greenwood Lake

by Michael Estabrook

Published in Issue No. 168 ~ May, 2011

we were too poor

to have vacations when I

was a kid

but once we drove all the way

to Greenwood Lake

stayed overnight in a cabin

with screen doors

in the front and the back

a long dark hallway yawning in

between

I caught three

sunfish

threw them back

climbed with my brother

over boulders and rocks

and into trees

collecting pine

cones

and stringy empty birds’ nests

but what I remember most

was Dad looking so thin, thin

as a matchstick man,

there beneath the mountains

sitting up

on the hood

of his shiny ’56 Buick

having

one last smoke

before the long

long ride

back home

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Michael Estabrook is a recently retired baby boomer child-of-the-sixties poet freed finally after working 40 years for “The Man” and sometimes “The Woman.” No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms. Now he’s able to devote serious time to making better poems when he’s not, of course, trying to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List.