Letter to the New Owner

Today your mother and father
will take your small hand,
and lead you across the threshold
into your new home.
The door is open wide
to bid us farewell
and grant you hello.
The lukewarm October sun
shrines over our belongings
carried one by one across the lawn.

My end today is your beginning.
With round eyes you'll take in the dust-
filled rooms, spurned by the removal
of our belongings to make room for yours.
It will not be long before
you call this place your home
just as I did when I was your young age.

Soon you'll discover the comfort
of your new bedroom,
cast in morning glow
making the daisies on the wall
almost look real.
As the years pass you'll learn
the comforting creak of the heater
on a winter night,
and find just the right spot
on the backyard hill, that will carry you
the farthest on a sled.
In spring the big old maple will
be your ladder to the sky
on strong leafy limbs,
and summer's heat will bid you to dance
among the dandelions and drink the sweet juice of garden strawberries.

Now it is fall, and the sign emblazoned
SOLD topples in the cold wind.
Neat piles of leaves are waiting
to be dispersed with a jump.
There's still time before the sun
goes down to make a fort in
the cornfield before it's plowed,
so find a fluff of milkweed pod
and wish that this home will be yours forever,
sending it with the breeze.