The school bus home found me somewhere in the middle
amidst the shuffling of shoes and sundry talk of in-between years.
There was comfort when we moved;
in the ripped vinyl seat, foam exposed;
in the hardened gum, wads of paper milled,
in the hum of wheels stirring the long highway north.
 
Like a fox facing north
not able to catch its prey turning circles in the middle,
I have had much time without direction, my own heart milled.
But yet I stand awake as an investor in those unadorned years
finding myself well-contented and exposed
only feeble without gates to breach a place where the cold air moves.
 
So too I hope, my beloved three will be moved
through an artery of their own, aiming north;
teenage secrets and falsehoods exposed–
not finding hope in the unyielding ground of middle,
but rather in the might that comes from many more upward years.
There they will stand like a mountain range, convinced and unmilled.
 
Oh to join them past the flaxen fields of alfalfa milled
the golden-sided microcosm of life still moving;
to sit next to three times my blood gazing across the years
only catching prey with the indication of north.
my eldest, my youngest, and my one in the middle;
the heat in their bellies surely rising with the shadows of prairie exposed.
 
And the cottony creek, the tress of transcendent clouds; exposed.
They will be tested and trodden–spirits hardened and milled.
They will spin and twist and contort and find themselves a part of the middle–
they will stand for nothing, too tired, too scared, too dizzy to move.
Yet still that yellowed envelope will creak and pull and circle north
delivering them home, year after year.
 
No matter how advanced my years
or weary my body–the excess of bad habits exposed,
my old, sightless eyes will still find the way North
towards youth and God; together milled,
happy with the knowledge that we will keep moving–
even the slow trees will rise away from the middle
 
as will the nest reveal its barren middle;
the airborne youth deciding which way to move.
Grateful like I, for the four wheels of life and the unfastened arms of a house unmilled.