Don’t Ask Me Where
The day we took all the back roads for the first time
And ended on many of the roads with a road that
Dwindled down to next to nothing, first returning us
To a wilder state, then grass, then a dead end was the
They've Been Told
Whenever people come
traveling down our
winding woods
river back road
they've been told
to look for a
landmark —
“a red house”
not ours but
they stop at our
red house
momentarily
lost
and we get
to visit for
a moment with
people heading
somewhere else
Pleasure
the maze built for children
a week ago is gone, taken away
but the circular grass of their
padded footsteps is here
Truck Lights
Every night and never
dusk but pitch dark a
truck comes up our dirt
back road in slow low
gear and now with mud
season we can really hear
the truck grind and I know
it is the same truck by the
string of lights on top of
the cab and I’ve let it go
past minding my own
business until it started
going by once and then
it was twice and now it is
three times and even my
wife hears the truck plowing
by very slowly at 4AM when
she normally awakens and
starts to work, rebuilding a
wood fire, finding her socks
and now I see peering out the
window as the truck passes
it may be a dump truck and
why is it going round and
round each time on the hour —
no one knows and we know no
one to ask — it’s all deep dark
woods where the truck comes
through — it’s become a world
all its own
—————————
Bob Arnold
Heaven Lake
Longhouse 2018
