Posts for June 23, 2025 (page 12)

You’re in the car that you’ve limped along
since the days of your high school years
that are further in the distance
every time you look.

In the passenger seat is a girl
who has been there a while,
now more of a woman
who you can’t quite equate
with the kid who stood alongside you
on stages and in classrooms
in tiny, nowhere towns
through what you thought
were your biggest, everything years.

Fields of nothing roll by
as midwest cities–
each one a carbon copy
of the one before–
fade to dust in the
rearview.

You swap stories about how
you each lost faith in 
your religion but maybe not 
your belief in a God,
under the shadow of billboards
declaring that
HELL IS REAL
and
JESUS SAVES.

She tells you how she knows
that no matter how far she strays,
she ultimately plans
to return home.
You say the opposite,
claiming with false bravado
that you can’t get far enough.

Secretly you know
that the odds are you
will end up back home too,
(you don’t know if 
should be resentful
or comforted
by that fact)
either by choice
or by failure.
(You think they might
mean the same thing)

Everything you know is behind you;
everything you think you know is ahead of you.
Every time you leave one and come back to the other
it seems like you know it a little less.

“Home” is no longer distinct,
falling somewhere between
the one you were given
and the one you’ve made:
what’s behind
and what’s ahead.
The girl who has always been beside you
has grown up
and you’re not quite sure if 
you have too.
Every town is dying:
mere rest stops on the road 
to being forgotten.
Everything you try to leave behind
haunts the side of the road
and the inside of your soul.
Everything you try to hold onto
manages to leave or get left 
in one of those nowhere towns.

HELL IS REAL,
the billboards remind you,
in case you try to forget.

But the road still stretches
ahead of you.
There’s only one direction to go.

You don’t know where it’s taking you.
You’re not there
yet.

(June 20-25, Bob out of Indiana)
    
    Cruise up, for 4th of July,    Commenwealth’s border
    Line on driver’s side (mine),  Broadway, just over the
    Ohio from home, my coworker,        an anachronistic 
    South Roy Wilkins Avenue (9th),     64 Jetstar facing,
    End of the Summer shutdown,                  toward  the

  Entrance to Cave Hill, sunny day, I     happen to notice
  No bridges between buildings, just slipstreams alight.
  Consider                                                                         my
  Options .        .       .     .                                .     .       .        .
  Unfortunately, the dozen (+/-30) ships          scattered.
  Never had sense to check Barry Jr’s    Courier-Journal
  Then, nor spoke to  i nterrup t  my                 golf buddy
  Enjoying his gas station Coke, point out  how the river
  Reflected their glow. Still, I had sight     & I was glad to
  See it–grateful–I still          dream                 in full color.

go buy a lime. The
young girl at the cash regis-
ter gave it to us.               

*an erasure of “Quinceañera,” by Jess Roat, Lexington Poetry Month (06/22/25)                                                                

There are three of you,
two scratching at their desks
one standing far down the hall.

That is all,
no interaction
no recognition

And the file cabinets are closed

A time when rotary dials
reined (and rang), no texts

with gifs could tantalize you
to turn your attention away
from the job of the day.

There aren’t even snapshots
in frames on your desks –  

strictly business, strictly BS.

So, it seems
so old,
so cold,

so closed in the Kodak margins,
you are alone.

Tide rolls in and brings
The bite of the cold sea and
Sand to itch my toes.

Tide rolls out and takes
Balance from tumbling creatures
But not itchy sand.

knocking at the front door

waiting to be let in 

she’s got a bundle of 

wildflowers from her 

backyard– she is 

beautiful 

like nothing you have

ever seen 

maybe because you 

met her later in life

she didn’t start showing 

up consistently 

until recently 

i wished on a star 

for her to visit 

just one more time

but here she is,

asking to move in 

to the upstairs bedroom

The train pulses with accented voices, desperate for firefly light.