sweet sweet shame (draft)

I roll down the window in the back
Dad looks over his shoulder, laughs
"too warm?"
I smile, slide my hand out of the car
"no, I just like air."

He lights another cigarette
He wears a camo jacket
We're driving to the thousand islands
I feel so far from my life and yet in the midst
"what? do you not have air in new york city?"

I say nothing, Mom cuts in
Babbles about the convenience store robbery last night
some story in the paper about someone
cutting off the tails of horses in the dark
We drive past a farm and she muses
"I wonder if those horses still have theirs."

Country blurs by
I think it's strange
that for a county so full of hills
so close to the mountains
that these flat meadows
stretch as far as I can see

golden, heathered, spring earth
in a couple months it will all be hay
the tractors will roar to life
and the north country will smell like summer again

it is mud season
the deer linger on the fenceline in the distance
I want to walk down the dirt roads
I feel ten again, innocent, curious

I try not to feel disappointed
I am sitting in the stir of pain and frustration
inside the hive of my mind
and trying to see past the whirl into the outside

These are the unlined roads
of my childhood that I retreat to when hurt
I am an accelerator cruncher
I am not one to line up pool shots
Just slam the cue
hoping something is sunk
and hopefully in my favor

I close my eyes
hope patience will court me
wish for the eye and the temperance
to breathe, aim, then shoot

it's such a sweet sweet shame
such a sweet sweet shame