Dr Paul's Poetry Pages

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Edge of the Road

Standing beyond the edge of the road

I look back up the bank where the bridge ends.

The concrete tongue forms a drain of flows

Backwards into the darkness of all spent lives.

There was a store perhaps, now only the forest entangled.

Children play in the thickets of the Wakarusa bottom

And gar groom the waters that pass around

Where I stand looking back through the green leafed time.

Herons flap by, slowly stirring time with their wings;

Droppings mark their stops with white seconds

That run into the river's blood where I stare down the road.

And I imagine there is someone staring back as he looks out from the bridge's edge,

Back at me in the bright white light,

Reaching his hand to me from his side

To my side where the heron's fly

And stab at frogs and the flycatcher wags her tail

In small units on a branch just beyond

The edge of the road.

Copyright © Paul Decelles August 30, 1999