Broken Lines
Broken Lines
by jael bietsch

Broken lines pass and the van is warming
in small degrees. We move
toward sunlight. The roadside
is looking familiar. These interstate
highways watched from how many windows
We were always moving,
always
getting there.

After a while
homesickness works its way
and feels finally familiar. Passing homes
on frontage roads, trailors, road trash,
brown brick houses with split-rail fences
worn-wood barns and tractors rusted in fields.
Yellow stubble-fields fine frozen into velvet.
Long red brush the wind has laid down.
A creek cleaves a bank
among trees
deep enough to show layers
among cattails.

Broken lines
pass and we pass
a U-Haul moving
a family. I search out the small face
pressed to the window, counting license plates
and mile-markers, fogging the way
home. Eyes catch on birch trees
and farm ponds, the same grey sky, the same
broken lines.
Searching out the horizon
something familiar.


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    ©: 1995 Jael Bietsch

    This site created and maintained by Off the Page Graphics.
    March 8, 2000