(for Donna Gail)

Maybe because we flatlanders shiver
under skies delivering rare bits
of snow, while our neighbors
2,500 feet higher have been told
to expect eight inches tomorrow
and ten inches the next day,
which is far from usual for them,

and maybe because every winter
I forget what 105 degree days
feel like as my feet complain that
they will never be truly warm again,

but stumbling around online,
I find myself lusting after a girly
pink 1961 Holiday House trailer,
one of only 200 made that year
in southern Oregon designed by
a guy who created a now-famous
mail-order fruit basket company
and wanted to keep his workers
busy during the off season.

My sister would’ve been a year
old when this baby was new,
and I’d have been three, but I can
see us a few years later eating
at the starburst Formica table,
looking out the windows with
the skinny metal blinds, napping
on the cozy bed, opening the pink
fridge for some Kool-Aid,

Dad and Mom having hitched us
up to the ’57 Chevy and set off
for someplace warm with a lake,
summer on full blast, not a
snowflake in sight.

(For more photos of the 1961 pink Holiday House trailer, click here.)