St. Francis Katie Zwerling, leave everything behind and come with me to St. Francis, a little town way up in Maine, way up there, way out there. When people say out in the middle of nowhere they mean this place, surrounded by logging roads cleared a hundred years ago so trucks could haul logs to populated places. You’ve seen roads surrounded by trees. These roads are really surrounded by trees! You drive on, it’s a bit scary. Nothing’s around these winding dirt roads but trees and this town, where we could settle in a house with heat, air conditioning. Would the house have central air? Maybe. But it would have electricity, plumbing, and we’d be close to the logging roads, get to know them so we wouldn’t get stuck or lost. People want to be near the ocean, or a lake or a golf course. I’d take these logging roads any day over a golf course or a mall, roads with trees around, pines, evergreens, no vehicles, except us in ours, my jeep with a GPS, so as not to get lost. So much snow in winter, a snowmobile would be needed. I could buy one! Snowsuits to keep us warm. Go out on those roads, not too far, and come back to our house in St. Francis. Both of us stripped naked I could kiss you all over. We could make love, then go to a local cafe, come home, watch Reign on Netflix. St. Francis has WiFi. We could call people on our cell phones. When logging roads were made, did they had telephones way up there? It’s way, way different from here.
Peter Mladinic has published three books of poems: Lost in Lea, Dressed for Winter, and Falling Awake in Lovington, all with the Lea County Museum Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico. His fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
