Moving to Kentucky

It's always nice when, flipping through the poems you've set aside for a rainy day, you come across one that when written you didn't quite care for, but upon rereading, find that you actually like. Such is the case with this poem. I wrote it several weeks ago, and it is a piece of a series of semi-autobiographical poems (hence the title "IV"). It is about moving to Kentucky from California, and consists mainly of fragmentary memories of visiting with my grandparents before and after the actual move. It is subtitled "Moving to Kentucky."

IV.

Our first taste of snow came in April.
We'd never seen snow like this before,
and I gazed at the cover of white
wondering how it fell
to lie about, settled just so
on the Kentucky plain.
My cousin, Scott, rolled a ball
from the flakes that had gathered
on the windshield
of Grandma's Chevrolet.

The cows with their bells
grazed about the pasture,
chiming along the fence
and chewing dried grass
near the barbed-wire posts.

That summer, with the snow cleared,
we tied a rope to hang above the river
down the road, and swung from a rock
into the water. Fishing from beneath
the bridge, we drank Coca-cola and root
beer, catching rainbow trout,
and saving them for dinner.

As we wound back up the street,
we passed the Amish goat farm,
commenting on the way it smelled
and the lack of electricity.

In Grandma's kitchen we drank lemonade,
waiting for cartoons to come on the television.
Outside, we dug our feet into the sandbox,
and built an Indian fortress of dirt-red clay.