Do I want to move to the Big City or
go back to the mountains of Vermont
where the silence is deafening, where I
will surely drown in the cavernous
green mountains, now hidden, snow
capped ?
Hayley Rose 2007
A vortex. A wise woman once warned
me that it was a vortex, Vermont. A
spiral of energy that either sucks you in
or spits you out. It spit me out. This is
why it’s so desolate, she said. People
cannot take the quiet for too long, or
they take the quiet for so long that they
can no longer take the noise.
A young poor college student used to
traverse the shores of Lake Champlain.
Used to walk from pub to pub in
downtown Burlington, testing the liquor
and brews; to make sure they weren’t
poisonous, of course. On the corner of
College Street and Battery, there was a
condominium complex. Brick and mortar,
iron balconies, West facing windows
overlooked the sea.
Hayley Rose 2007
It looked like a sea, the lake, so vast and
unmoving except for the gentle waves the
UVM students rode on sailboats. I had to
crane my neck to look up at the
penthouse with balconies that wrapped
it’s arms around it like a lover.
