1
Returning to their home town after 25 years
was surreal. They got lost trying to get to
the high school. The ice cream stand they worked in
was now a dry cleaners, while Old Smith’s Farm
was gone altogether.
2
Looking at the photos posted by George
the old swimming hole back home is now a fancy
water park with diving platforms and a wave pool
and roller coaster slides such a blight on that old
small town charm and I think I’m going to cry.
3
Contrasting today’s summer of yardwork
house repairs, car troubles and no money
with his youthful summers of dating, swimming
ice cream stands and summer stock theatre makes him sad
with longing and knowing you can never go home again.
Michael Estabrook is retired. No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms, able instead to focus on making better poems when he’s not, of course, endeavoring to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List.
