Appeasing the Situation in Lebanon, NH - Roy G. Guzmán

Home is where the mind, having failed three landings,
traces back its history to the schoolyard; to the grand
church in the middle of the square; to the icon of a flutist

guiding children at the park to find their individual parents.
Ghosts of horses trot without purpose. Every stone
and every tree is where it should be.

The old man of Lebanon solves last Sunday’s crossword puzzle.

Depending on which corner one stands and with what
propulsion, there are mountains. Window-shoppers fill
every street, and buses never drive students on Sundays

from the college. The benches, if one should remember to clean
them, remind one of the meeting places long gone, where poets
would confuse lines or artists would assemble their watercolor

creations. The old buildings and the parents and the pancake
drifts would convene in the middle of the town.

So what compels one to share one’s obsessions, David,
at the Farmer’s Market, by the lilacs overlooking the mountains?

If you swerve off the road we could end up in White River Junction
and have us some brunch at the Polka Dot. Or jettison ourselves
onto the rooftops of the summerhouses, all while I recite De Burgos.

None of this belongs here, David. Forget the Psalms. Sing

the hymns of the Middlesex artist instead. Learn Rachmaninoff.
Take a cruise to the Balkan Sea. Think of the droves who’ve died
defending this foreign landscape to preserve these massif obsequies.

None of it is ours; I will never be yours.

Come on, brother! Let us have one last round of these imperial stouts,
and bid goodbye to these bucolic but ultimately parochial theories

of yours, at home, in your head, in New Hampshire, in the nowhere.


Roy G. Guzmán works extensively with haikus, autobiography and hybrid pieces. A native of Honduras, he also explores citizenship and identity.  You can find him here.