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| Photo by Gellinger on pixabay |
5:30am
Mom gently touches
my hair
wakes me.
I dress in slow motion
sleep walk upstairs
out the door
down the front steps
into the blue van
onto the make-shift bunk.
Paisly patterned mattress
the magic carpet
that carries me
and my brother
across the landscape
to visit again the family
mom left behind
in another land.
But first
sleep.
Green and rock blur by.
Stretched out,
propped up on elbows
I’m awake,
but my world changes before me
as if a dream.
My brother and I read comics, play cards, tell jokes
read books, count half houses on trailers and other
oddities seen on road trips, read license plates, eat
snacks…
sleep.
Blue flame heats lunch
on the picnic table. Mom stirs
beans and wieners
again. Tomorrow we’ll eat real food, but
I don’t mind camper’s fare.
Last night on the road,
light from the rest stop threatens
to keep me awake. Suddenly
the engine starts.
Mom’s awake and ready
to be there, to be home again.
Maybe to just be off the road
with two kids
and a cat or a dog
or sometimes both.
Rural before city.
Corn fields follow us
for miles. I wonder why we can’t stop
and get some.
I can almost reach it.
Thud!
Black meets glass.
A crow.
My father stops.
Pulls over
climbs out
gently lifts the bird’s limp body
from the windshield
carries it towards
waves of corn
turned dark
by slant light.
He lays the bird
to rest
in a grass gutter.
We pull away in silence.
Somehow aware
that what is contained
in our blue van,
the family that flies
across landscapes
will change.
The magic carpet rides
through seas of corn and granite
stop
three years later.
Then in two more years
before I’m fifteen
Dad
ill
disappears.
He leaves
us for golden fields
or piles of sawdust
like those he waded through
as he made
and made.
He left to
fly with the crow.
He took
Mom’s sense of direction
with him.
The crow reappeared
thirteen years ago.
This time
it hit me.
Its wing gently
brushed my hair
brought back
my point of compass,
directed me south.
Another journey,
this time through air
on new found wings
to a new life
a new family.
©2011 Joanne Young Elliott
