HAPPY PLACE

When I couldn’t find it in the blue
rubber swings that had hung themselves
with a rusted noose from decade-old wood
at the city park, I drove on.

I searched in the bark that was peeling
off the birch trees that we used to sit beneath
right on the edge of town, but
it wasn’t there either, so I kept driving.

And it wasn’t until I had drove to
the state border, desperately searching
for the place to make me whole,
had I found it

in the polite dings that greet me
upon opening my car door.