Vermont Woodblock

My daughter and I took a father-daughter trip (we had some important things to discuss) this weekend to Burlington VT. I-89 in Vermont is just a spectacular highway. But we decided to drive some of the side roads through the mountains. Even though it was raining and we couldn’t see much of anything. Still the mist can make its own scenery. Rte 125 is a scenic byway and climbs a mountain by the Breadloaf Wilderness (not sure if the Conference was going on). On the descent, the sky cleared and we could finally see some mountain views. Sometimes it's just a matter of getting to the other side.

Sonnet August Nineteen

When we got off the interstate at Bethel
and later drove beside the Wilderness
in rainfall, I’d been measuring your answers
to my “exams” on marriage and Japan.
Recall I went off the road to read the map.
Well maybe I was taking in your saying
you’d walked along a plan for all those years,
through high school, college, graduate school as well;
and now you work within your field but time
was throwing you this curve and you could keep
shadowing that plan or go where life was going.
My one response was—learn some Japanese
before you go. Recall the rain was stopping—
revealing the Green Mountains in the nearby distance.

~Son Rivers 2005