I live in a Norman Rockwell painting

There is a pond –
made by human hands
in the lower ground of
the new cabin
that sits in the curve
half-way down Jack Mountain
on the way to Monterey

If you live here, you’ll know
just where I mean

There is a pond –
and in the grass at
the side of that pond
there now lives an
eagle – a bald eagle
young, I’d guess
from her size
but with the coloring
and feathers of an adult

Yesterday there was a man
sitting in the middle of an empty
field in a dilapidated lawn chair
with a dulcimer in his lap

The day before yesterday
Ann Babcock – well, it
looked like Ann --
stooped
over the flower beds
on the court house lawn
dead-heading
[note to Garcia fans:
when it’s a verb,
something very different
is happening]
her garden tools
at her side in a stroller

How Norman Rockwell
would have loved us