This is the beginning of Poems from our 2008 Trip down South visiting her relatives.  This is the beginning of that particular odyssey starting May 16th, 2008.

2008 Southern Trip

the first day part 1

Breakfast at Vickie’s Restaurant

This was the time before the time
big breakfast
before we say good and bye to the pets
make sure everything electric is un and plugged
and go

This was the first step
of the last journey
we may do this way
gas prices combining
with the onset of age

This was a morning
Saturday May and sixteen
two hundred and one eight
Leaving Pennsylvania
for two and some weeks

We had our breakfast here
while the Swarthmore regulars floated
in out
in out
we lingered over coffee
then go-

6-11 revised 7-23

The book Store from 1985

This was from
back in the time
when bookstores had other names
not chains
before Barnes banned everyone else
before Borders made refugees
of indy book stores

This was from when a
Bookstore experience
was still a case of love at first or second look
when I still hadn’t read everything
before I stopped writing

This was a place where I could get
lost in the stacks
lost in the stacks
Civil War History
World War 1 History
World War II History
British Poets
Biographies of silent Film Stars
then some really obscure topics

This was a place that must only
still exist in the South
They had videos for sale, too
must of been out of eight tracks, though
the few bits of time I was there

It’s because of places like this
that I have a basement of unread books
that still
have the potential of being read
once I stop having so much of a
damn life
and start receding
start receding

Unfortunately,
there was not a Paula store in that there mall
one she might love equally as well as mine
a pet store, a health food store,
I didn’t say, a clothing store,
Because, she did come to get me,
and I hadn’t yet spent
a week there.

6-18 revised 7-23

Richardson’s

That’s all the note says now
That’s all my mind says now
It was lunch first day out
the first of seventeen lunches on the road
the first time
to someplace we may never go again
shouldn’t there be a memor-
shouldn’t one of me know something

I had seafood,
she had soup and salad
it wasn’t busy and bad
it wasn’t full of folksy

there was noone there
I might possibly have dated
always a danger back home
always a danger back home

we had already pushed
the delete button
one hour after

Bob Small
7-23-08
revised 7-24