The Drive Home

Early evening Easter Sunday I drive
Home.  Westbound on 316 with the sun
     hard on the left too low for the visor,
Too high for the trees.

Twenty year old shades (retro-cool?) cover my eyes and present a world

            earthy rich in green gold brown tones.



My road home twines over rolling hills, lazy with views, sporadic views
     of a hilltop before and another in the rearview, a mile away future and the past
A mile behind while waiting atop the present.

Fresh spring greens of broad leafs blend smoothly

With forever darker hues of Georgia pines, creating shadow mirages
     where no shadow lives. 
Wild flowers and berries dot median and meadow with arbitrary splashes
     purple, blue and raspberry.  Sideways sunshine fires brown grass, three days mown,
     golden 
Spring sunshine has not the heat to drive the cows to shade,
They stand or graze, a careless collection of white and black bovine bulks. 

While stopped by one of the lights spaced miles apart,

I see a tree, a symmetrical form with no limbs for ten feet of dark bark
     that explodes on top into unlikely shades of shocking sumptuous generous
     green gifts of spring storms. 
Lush grass rushes startling wildflowers up to its base.

A dark shady patch hugs the base of the tree, then juts wildly away, fleeing the sun,

     A vain attempt to mingle with coming night. 
Every river reaches the sea, but not enough shadows reach the night
     arriving too slowly, leaving too quickly.   

I see you there

     as engine hum and tire whine on pavement fade. 
There is now bird song, life in limbs above dissolving distant highway hiss
     a mile removed now-no, more. 
You are beaming smile and impish grin.
You are supple skin and lightly blowing hair. 
You are soft rustle cotton and denim and leaves. 
You are dancing eyes that see
     only me and things that together we allow into this pasture world.
You are earth scent and tart wild raspberry and soft honeysuckle’s
     delicate dance. 

You reach out, take my hand and I take my place

     my only place, beside you. 
We drink wine and nibble fruit and crackers and cheese and newborn air and springtime. 
We breathe in each other and we breathe out smiles and secrets of
     lifetimes lived in mere moments. 
We bathe in slanted sunlight, melting into the dewy desperation of twined arms and legs
     and heated passions and too full chests.  

I think I wish I pray this never ends- this tree and pasture and grass and moment

     exist only here and only now and only for us. 
My life and time and humble being surely shall never know a finer moment,
     more ripe with all the fruits that man or gods have imagined.
Unless perhaps in dreaming?  If I dream now, why then not dream forever?
Why then not this be forever? 

Some impatient horn honks and I step on the gas to move the road beneath me, knowing
     This imagined moment must be,
     will be
          for me
                  our forever. 

Photograpy courtesy of Red-LetterImaging. Visit http://www.red-letterimaging.com/