What It’s Like
And once, for no special reason,
I rode in the back of the pickup.
leaning against the cab.
Everything familiar was receding
fast—the mountain,
the motel, Huldah Currier’s
house. And two stately maples. . . .
Mr. Perkins was having a barn sale,
and cars from New Jersey and Ohio
were parked along the sandy shoulder
of Route 4. Whatever I saw
I had already passed. . . .
(This must be what life is like
at the moment of leaving it.}
Jane Kenyon
from Collected Poems
Greywolf Press, 2005