Wishes

from Star Sequence

I’ve spent my days like pennies
hopefully tossed into a fountain,
wishing on the lightning bug tree
in the sweet June dusk and on the evening
star as I herded grandpa’s cattle
to a different pasture at the end
of another day. My father gravely
warned us, If wishes were horses
then beggars would ride, to which I tartly
replied, I ain’t a beggar and I got a horse.

The horse got sold, the cattle
sent away to the stockyards
when grandpa passed, the farm
auctioned, the wishing tree
uprooted to make room
for low cost housing
to shelter the newly poor.

When looking back
on especially starry nights
from this ridge above the ocean
I see how it was never my home,
never owned a nail of it,
nor ever wished
for such things as my father
held with his bear grip.

What I wished
for all those nights
on every evening star
was nothing more
than for the sweet
June days to stay
until I found
a home of my own.