The Road Home

by Leonard Henry Scott

She walks to her car in the IGA parking lot
Long striding and brisk in a flowered dress
Jim Dandy grits and Budweiser topping her cart
Dark eyes flashing at the orange night falling sky
She starts up the car and rolls onto the street
Squinting down creases of ebony skin one
Flat hand raised to shade the white glare from
The shimmering road and the bones of the town
Slowly she passes the yesterday mansions now
Moldered to wreckage and funeral homes
Where only the echoes and ghosts still remain
Drives carefully by and leaves them undisturbed
Then out on the road where the cotton scraps blow
And the Carolina sun clings faintly to the sky
Together they race through farms and plantations
While night creeping darkness remains close behind
Together they race through the gray desolation
From old things forgotten yet always recalled of
A long ago time unknown but remembered and
The restless dark spirits that still haunt this road

She drives fast and straight toward her destination
Away from the darkness that grabs at her wheels
If spirits are true and not false apparitions, best
To meet them in sunlight than here in these fields

She makes one last quick turn through the dust to
Her yard, and with door-slamming quickness looks Up at the sky, a lone sliver of light barely cuts the
Horizon, home safely again once more before night

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Leonard Henry Scott was born and raised in the Bronx, New York where he attended Evander Childs High School. He is a graduate of American University (BS) and The University of Maryland (MLS), and was on the staff of the Library of Congress for many years. He and his wife, Hattie, live in National Harbor, Maryland. His essays, fiction and poetry have appeared in; Garbanzo, Foliate Oak, The MacGuffin, The Lyric, Poluck and other publications.