Ten Hours on the Road

Ten hours on the road,
most of the landscape a blur,
a road you have not traveled in a decade or more,
familiar and strange at the same time.

You do not see what is there,
you see what was. Journeys and memories
that may or may not be what you remember,
poignant and pointed both.

You let the memories wash over you.
Feel them, let them go in the wind
of the convertible at seventy miles an hour,
left behind, blurred, broken things. Vague now.

As they should be, You have a life far more real now.
You know what is and is not. There is certainty in it,
a thing you never thought you would feel again,
a thing that makes the journey with you,

Love, as you thought it should be,
and finally, is,

About this poem

I have been traveling today, through a lot of the roads in Western Virginia that were home to me for over thirty years. Every mile had a memory. Some good. Some not. Many of them so many years past, that I question what I thought I knew. It was unexpected, all those memories pummeling me at one time.

It could have been overwhelming, but it was not. Somewhere they changed to memories of the life I have now, the woman I love and trust and the certainty in that love. And those old memories faded away like the early morning fog, and I was left with what is. Even if she is ten hours behind me.

I can’t wait to get home.

Tom