Direction

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