Posted in Passages

Encore

Posted on by tq1695

The road was lonely unpopular
shunned
scenic, but handsome not beautiful,
masculine with dull menace.
Now flexing its resistance
too long for a single day’s cycling
tent – an uneasy night
dawn, then gone – ASAP
almost there – but time for a break
food and water
an eruption of gravel as a car brakes urgently
Tense –
Until vision is convinced
an elderly woman is running across the road.
She and her friend peddled the same road, 60 years before
forest then and pumice and sand
balloon tires,
billy and frying pan tied to leather saddlebags
canvas tent and girl guide camping.
She smiles and laughs and talks
and talks and laughs and smiles
and talks.

She is on a journey –
retracing hers steps, chauffeured by her son
nostalgia as virtual reality – it has made her pilgrimage.

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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.