400: COMING HOME - by Dennis Lee

 

400: COMING  HOME   by  Dennis Lee You are still on the highway and the great light ofnoon comes over the asphalt, the gravelledshoulders. You are on the highway, there is a kind oflaughter, the cars poundsouth. Over your shoulder the scrub-grass, the fences,the fields wait patiently as though someonebelieved in them. The light has laid itupon them. Onecrow scrawks. The edgestake care of themselves, there isno strain, you can almost hear it, youinhabit it.  Back in the city many things you lived forare coming apart.Transistor rock still fillsback yards, in the parks young men do things tohondas; there will beheat lightning, beer on the porches, goings on.That is not it.  And you are still on the highway. There are nohouses, no farms. Across the median, past the swish and thud of thenorthbound cars, beyond the oppositefences, the fields, theclimbing escarpment, solitary in thebright eye of the sun thebirches dance, and theydance. They havetheir reasons. You do not knowanything.Cicadas call now, in the darkening swollen air there is dustin your nostrils; akind of laughter; you are still on the highway.