Two Friends From Long Ago

one wrote of new snow
nine or ten inches
neighbors plowing for the oldens,
grandkids riding ballast
back end of the family tractor

past the house is a perfect
rust brown thirties pickup,
no windows,
a thing Frost might have painted
or Faulkner

another wrote an older sister
now has died,
her ashes directed to Beaver Brook,
a far childhood town,
upsetting her son the lawyer

though likely he’ll accede
this one last time.
eventually there’s an estuary,
hills behind,
ocean ahead

George Perreault’s latest book, Bodark County, is a collection of poems in the voices of characters living on the Llano Estacado in West Texas.