Lots of dry eyes in the house after that one.
This is a poem about--
I don't think this happens around Tuscon, because there
are so many Tuscon like names for gated communities and condo
developments and whatnot.
I mean, there are lots of Spanish words,
and vistas and stuff like that.
But in other parts of the country,
when you have these housing developments,
often you have a very rustic or kind of pastoral
name for them, usually involving an animal, cute names
like Beaver Hollow, or Deer Run, or whatever.
Quail Ridge and stuff like that.
And of course, when you think about it,
these are precisely the animals that
were banished from this area in order to build these houses.
So the signs are really epitaphs for these poor creatures.
So having seen enough of those, I
wrote this poem called "The Golden Years."
And the reason its called The Golden Years--
well, it's a sonnet, and it's spoken
in the voice of a retired widower, a retired fellow.
"The Golden Years."
"All I do these drawn-out days is
sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge
where there are no pheasants to be seen and last time I looked,
no ridge.
I could drive over to Quail Falls
and spend the day there playing bridge,
but the lack of a falls and the absence of quail
would only remind me of Pheasant Ridge.
I know a widow at Fox Run, and another
with a condo at Smokey Ledge.
One of them smokes, and neither can run,
so I'll stick to the pledge I made to Midge.
Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge?
I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge."