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There is a town in North Ontario
Dream comfort memory to spare
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there
College is the place I go in my heart when I need a place to go: Maple leaves ironed between wax paper. Mountains turned to flame in the fall. My mailbox for four years: 2947. My i.d. #: 84337. Blue sky winter afternoons. A narrow bed with a blue wool blanket. A library carrel. The language lab, headphones over my ears. Dancing at the Alibi. Chinese characters written over and over and over. The boy who wore the army jacket and set up a shrine to John Prine in his dorm room. The girl who laced her hiking boots with red laces.
For me it was college, but it doesn’t have to be. A person, a place, an experience, a single moment: and suddenly the roof of your life lifts off and blows away.
Directions to Your College Dorm, by Faith Shearin
All hallways still lead to that room
with its ceiling so high it might have been
a sky, and your metal bed by the window,
and your crate of books. First,
you must walk across the deep
winter campus to find your friend
throwing snowballs that float
for years. Then, open our letters:
shelves of words. You will find
our coats, our awkwardness, the tickets
from the trains that witnessed
our confusion. Love was the place
where we became as naked
as morning; it was dangerous and
dappled and we visited its shores
with suitcases and maps from childhood.
I remember our shadows growing
on your wall while a candle
swallowed itself. You kept a single
glass of water on a desk and it trembled
whenever we danced.
Click here for more information about Faith Shearin.
Words by Winter (my poetry podcast)
Alison McGhee 
Oh my…you’ve sent me spiraling back through the decades. Waxed paper maple leaves are a thing of the past. They changed the wax. I forgot Neil Young was young. But have you been to North Ontario? You must come
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Sheilagh! I didn’t know they’ve changed the wax on wax paper. Wow. And Neil, oh Neil. The soundtrack to my college years. I will make it to North Ontario one of these days – I’ve been to Toronto a few times but not in many many many years.
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Helpless Helpless
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Helplessly hoping. 🙂
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Wishing he could fly
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Hearing Sinead O’Connor for the first time and feeling like I’d found a sister I never knew I had.
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How beautiful, Ellen. I’m so sad for her and everyone who loved her.
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Faith- This is so gorgeous. “…it was dangerous and dappled”–Wow. Thank you.
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