Photo by Christopher Raley

Travel Log: Lost Fields

The western edge of Lost Fields
melted together memory and present
in the highway’s heat shimmer.

There are men who say geography
dictates the only true boundary.
But what of the stories we tell?

Aren’t there also men who say,
I was lost there, and there,
therefore, becomes lost?

Hard pan stretched east from the white line,
slowly rounded to hills only green
as covered by oak. I see behind them.

I see small disasters, broken people,
roads crumbling, forgotten
before they wind out of sight.

I see an A-frame house,
water seeping across brown carpet.
Old man nods at my tool belt, says,
I worked halfway ‘cross the country
with a belt like that slung over my shoulder.

Road noise called my eyes awake
and I said: Charles, remember when
you and me and . . . ?