LEAVING HOME
Sad -eyed parents waved goodbye
standing at the door in stalwart repose,
image of a Grant Wood portrait.
Drove away from New York
in a hundred dollar '37 Dodge
headed for the University of Iowa.
Bowels rumbled
when a hitchhiker pulled a gun
in the tunnel of the turnpike of Pa.,
"just for practice he explained."
Blizzard in Ohio,
cascading avalanche of snow,
inching across a frozen white tundra,
globs of glycerine on iced-up windshield,
submerged vision,
like a fish-eyed view of ice fishermen.
Harnessed skid-chains
thwackering both fenders
through all of Illinois.
360 degree spinouts in Iowa,
pelting sleet, road a mirrored sheet of ice
till I drove behind a plow
pushing 3 feet of snow in 30 below
all the way to Iowa City.
Later, gazing eastward
Thought of Dicken's Mrs.Gummidge
Saying: "I am a lone, lorne creetur,
And every think goes contrairy with me."
Milton P. Ehrlich