January 15, 2019

The light, the town, the people, the food!

Jean's photographs make me long for the burnished hues of Amish country, barns 
the size of football fields. The cafe where she stops for a late breakfast features
cookbook-perfect biscuits and a waitress straight out of a movie set. I want to be
in the booth seat opposite, clinking coffee in thick ceramic mugs, but I am nowhere near
the turn off that particular highway, and the day is already curving too sharply
toward its finish. I get in the car anyway, and the back roads curlicuing from the parkway
take me to a graveyard just as dusk descends. At a back plot, a fresh bouquet is leaning
toward a newer headstone. Whoever was here sprinkled potato chips on the petals
in private homage to the woman buried below. The frozen grass is confettied with crumbs.
It's not Ohio, but Jean's here anyway, painting the whole scene in gold.