the path home

small privacy in a late May evening
at an Exxon station somewhere near Roanoke
an unhappy infant cries
I wait for Sandra and her lover
the florescent lights glare; the people buy co-cola
and leave me on the curb
counting minutes like jackstraws
scattered in god's chaotic way

seven hundred miles distant
Illinois breathes on
serendipitous in her over planning
there are stories there
stories high as the sears' tower
stories as long as the Illinois Central
stories sad or tough
or mugged by their inconsistencies

its a velvet night, just chill now
maybe warming—I cannot tell
I have just arrived from another starved winter
the chaldean girl sits like a stone sparrow
in disquiet—a boyish blonde absorbing
my losses with no seeming loss, herself

I live with another old friend
in only some discomfort
the object is: to make a life
to tell no lies
to hurt only carefully
so the dissolution is slow
although certain

this is the path home

Written in the spring of 1980 when I went to Virginia with Ross Hulvey to attend Gary Adkin's wedding. I ended up staying with Sandy Riseman because Ross could get a room in the dorm, being a Hollin's grad, but I couldn't. I thought at the time that he and Gary could've asked Richard to find a place to put me, but they didn't. I turned out to be just another accoutrement to their lives. I understand now that Ross was afraid I would charm the ladies at Hollins. I honestly had no recognition that people felt that way about me until Becky Bradway left me in 1993, telling me that I dominated things and she thought she should be the one dominating things. I just wasn't aware of that, surrounded, as I thought I was, by deft and interesting people. Well, Ross was a shy doofus, that is true. But Gary Adkins seemed to play the charming card quite well. Now I often hang with Dan Keding, and he is even more the center of attention than I am. A fair thing, I think.

In any case the chaldean girl in this is once again that blonde honey from Springfield's dark catholic side, Alison Clare Gaughan. She was laughing at me, those days, from the deck of the destruction of my weird love affair with the too young blonde.

If there is a lesson here, it is that you need to pay close attention to the details. I have been checking the numbers on this blog for the last two months and it is certainly an educational experience for me to note that I am the only person who comes here, at least for the last couple of weeks. I average one person a day. Of course, I come every day. There is a lesson here people. No one is interested in this poetry. Nonetheless, I keep putting it out there. Perhaps, sometime after I am gone, somebody will stumbled across this stuff and find something useful enough to keep in it. I hope this is so, but I don't expect it. But I leave my children, with at least fond memories of their father. Well, maybe not so much Joel. Hard to say from this end.