Praising the Driveway – a poem by Joel Moskowitz

Praising the Driveway 
 
The sunlight, the puddles, the peastones…  
millions of them… dimpled minerals 
under the cold sky. I lift a handful;
feel their bumps, crevices, slick edges; 

pocket one tiny worry pebble;
let the others drop, glint, be rinsed…
all pressed flatly together now 
by wheels rolling over and over the ribbon of them 
leading to the street…      

My driveway! 
Here, where your bare spots grow fresh grass tenderly;
here, where you’re strewn with smashed pinecones;
and here, by the garage, under clouds veiling the light, 
blown by wind, and passing over Tippling Rock…

And I have a front porch to watch it all from:
a visitor leaving a feather, leaving a dollop of poop,
a colony of ants flowing en masse like maple syrup over 
the stones, a fox trotting briskly on them at dusk, 
some thin-tailed prey in its mouth…

Let’s wait 
for the evening shadows of wires and trees,
for the ringing of town bells in the small hours, 
for the stunning grace of a full-grown doe 
caught in a bar of moonlight.

Joel Moskowitz, an artist and retired picture framer in Massachusetts, is writing a book of poems about moving into a new house at the edge of a forest. His poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Ibbetson Street Press, J Journal, Midstream, Naugatuck River Review, The Healing Muse, Muddy River Poetry Review, Boston Poetry Magazine, Amethyst Review and Soul-Lit.