Ironing Board Flats

After being sacked and weeks of drifting,

At the next right turn it begins to feel like home.

Even though it is Aunt and Uncle, whom I was forbade

knowing until late in our lives, I know that when I enter

their door I will be welcomed as if I am their only child

and their greeting will make all my wanderings

worth every step.

I reach over and shut off the radio as I turn

from the rippled High Desert dirt road.

The first thing I see is the hand-carved

wooden sign at the corner,

still gleaming with dew in early morning light.

“Welcome to Ironing Board Flats”

the sign says.

I hear the gravel crunching under the tires

as I slowly navigate my car up their serpentine

driveway—crooking because they didn’t want

to move the old rusty ironing board with the two

wire hangers dangling on the end.

The ironing board was there the day

they looked at the property.

It sealed the deal for them.

Rounding past the ironing board my eyes

follow the familiar red lava stones piled high

on both sides of the drive, delineating the trail

to be traveled to get to the reward.

Juniper trees, carefully trimmed and thinned out,

dotting the landscape, nearly hide the lazy deer

suddenly alerted by the noise of my car.

Entering the last curve of the long driveway,

Aunt’s sadly walled garden comes into view,

the nibbled forsythia giving testament

to the determination of the deer to outwit

the 8 foot chicken wire fence.

Finally Aunt and Uncle’s house sits in front of me,

something out of Good Housekeeping magazine.

“A place for everything, and everything in its place.”

A place for me.

Naida Lavon

Oct 10, 2009

Liz's poetry Workshop