Conestoga
By Joanne Lowery

My home away from home,
a box of boxes, a dry boat
laden with every provision
from the rendered lard of childhood
to the unbrewed coffee of the future
twice covered in cotton, yanked
from familiarity by twenty horned cows

to eat on the way, a milker
tied to the back of the bed
whose jostling can churns tonight’s butter,
ten chickens cooped on the side

where the jockey box holds nails and linch pins
along with a dictionary and ruled pad,
the roving eye eager for tree or simile
in a flat but scattershot world.
I have what I need, what I am—

a cantilevered head above axeled shoulders,
the grass parting, new ruts extending the old.

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