No Through Street by David Ward

No Through Street
By David Ward

I can see the end of this road.

I can send myself down
rabbit-hole memory

and trace the faded double yellow
past the old house with the
broken shutters hanging like black eyes
and the ancient bricks starting to let
their hands slip because
the past happened years ago
and tomorrow happens overnight,

the old house whose edges ar
as blurry in my watercolor poetry
as they are in my recollection
of ever having lived there.

I can see the flowers growing in the
gravel beside this highway,
and I am not scared to remember
things I will see again.

I have walked this road
under skies with suns like fists
under skies like the breath mist in a mirror
under skies that are stretched too tight
and rip at the horizon.

I will walk this road
in days dark enough for moonlight
in days that fit without having to
crumple the edge
in days that come to early
and let the stars watch the first
minutes of dawn.

I can already feel the pavement
through the bottoms of my shredded soles
and there is no place to rest
in the orange glow of the tar tunnel
running like a worm-hole
through the heart of a mountain.

I can see where this road stops,
where it grinds to a halt at
some ocean's rough edge,
and I can wait there to be
broken by the breakers.

I can see the end
of this road.

It will die out with the
echo of my footsteps.
It will be reclaimed by the grass
that climbs up through
the unpatched cracks.