Slow to leave
this Chattahoochee forest house.

Nighttime rain. Coffees on the porch.
Birthday champagne around the fire pit.

The Blue Ridge Mountains
attend to our long candlelit talks

of past, present and, especially
for our grown children, what’s to come.

Good-bye Nap-A-Way cottage.
So long little lizard and white bellied frog

until we drive this gravel road again–
this river-like road where the scenery changes like water.