PAULA RANKIN
Down the Road
I'm already there , says my birthday,
though evidently not far enough, say my family
and the doctors. But it's tiring
so I'm taking a break. Where are you, God,
when I need you? Sometimes the people I've needed
have been even needier than
I.
One year, my friend and I sat with legs swinging
from the seawall at high tide, toes barely sluicing
the shapes of the waves. Thinking deeply,
my friend declared each of us had already passed
our death-day, that there was a calendar square
waiting, though perhaps already filled
with important appointments, perhaps even the winning
of the Lottery, perhaps even Love or a good fight
or a fine coiffure or
haute couture
on a day
of otherwise flu and laryngitis, writer's block,
each of which would give way
as if they had no lasting power,
as if there were, after all, little sense
in anyone's making plans.
The road is usually still, always the dirt or gravel path
with weedflowers - deadnettle, rue - pushing through.
Tonight my beloved ' 85 Cadillac is stuck
in a raggedy pothole. One radial tire is flat
but the wire-rim hubcap , coveted enough
by someone one night to have been pried loose with the others
for resale, or prized out of need or love, seems OK.
The road is passing through the rural quiet
with no store, street lamps, or neon, not even a moon.
I'm praying there's a bend past which lies a fork,
one side of which heads straight to town. I'm praying
that all it takes is for me to choose rightly,
I, whose strongest weakness lies in not knowing
how to choose. I've gotten out the map
