Settlement day, vacant possession.  Spring breezes,
roof-racked cars Beverly Hillbillies style,
trailers swaying top-heavy, friends with wine to help
this rollicking into our rickety future.
 
A vagabond, I had almost given up on the idea,
sadness, trouble, a carapace like junk accruing.
Our families disapproved, but this was our life,
not Shakespeare, well, not tragedy, more romance.
 
We had agreed to stay child-free.  Plans can change.
I could grow a beard.  We had a loft, donkeys,
sheds with rusty nails, a distant view of mountains.
Bees can whisper innuendoes in paradise.
 
Rattling downhill to our bucolic river valley
I thought the day momentous.  What could go wrong?
When we arrived grouped strangers ignored us,
the vendor dead as a stone on our porch that morning.