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