Tonight, I’d rather be in a country-house zip code, shuffling along wood plank floors in socks that feel like pillows, pulling on the drawstrings of an old hood, and closing windows all around, while some radio commercial for local lumber gets played on the ½ hour, while the Scrabble board stays out because it’s not time to put it away yet, and the coffee pot keeps hot on the stove. The VHS tapes, one by one, off the shelf because the row behind it can’t be seen unless we do. There are just too many tapes, not to mention an old Robert Parker paperback that somehow got missed all these years. So, take that from the shelf before you forget. It’ll make for some cold, sleepy reading in a bed fit for one, just you, while crickets make love in the black of the night, while I’m buried in blanket, more than just two, in the bed right across you, feeling the waft of the draft, but excusing our noses, for the air is cooked with pinecones and smoked wood and all the pages of every book that’s ever been read in these beds.