Long Road Out of Nowhere

Keep walking, she said; keep going on, no matter what,

keep walking, even if you do not know where the road ends, one day

you will come to a place which will speak to you, and you will know

that this was what you were looking for.

Stop reading too many stories of lost people trying to find

themselves. You are not lost, she said, a few words and things and

people do not matter; maybe you were checked in at the wrong motel.

That was a long time ago.

That was before I left her.

I have been walking a long time, now. I have seen

old men whose faces sink in bottles of scotch at sundown, walking in

relentlessly straight lines, their despair burning their hearts

like guilt. I have walked with them, and with middle-aged women,

faces cast in stone, grim determination beating out like hammerblows

from the crow’s feet around their tired eyes. Strangers’ wives, sisters, daughters,

who find themselves on a dusty pathway, too tired to grieve.

Sometimes, the wind becomes opaque, as hard and resistant as boot leather, and

I stop, dust in my eyes. I see then, melting flowers, a sky dripping color, and

a road marked by its absence. Fleetingly, it comes-desire, and goes away,

and before moving I ask myself-where is she? Has she found

the place that will speak to her?

All around, there is only dust, and dirt and sad stories. Old men

of thirty summers will never stop. Their optimism turns grey

blended with loss- but catharsis always remains only a dream.