Sawed-off fence picket
turned sideways
points eastward, sort of
you are – we are – ‘that way’
if signs are to be believed
The sign unaware
you have been gone
thirty years, plus
your house,over twenty
anyone driving north on
Crow Wing County
Highway Three
would believe they could
turn, still find you
I know better
Driving by that sign
your name – paint dulled,
yet still legible
against washed-out gray
still hanging
securely on gnarled
old jack pine
set back from the road
There are other signs
other names – some
familiar, comfortable though
generationally updated
fancier, laser-carved
lacking charm, history
other names,
I am unacquainted with –
faceless interlopers
though they are
in the moment
I remain impressed
by durable simplicity:
sun-beached slab of oak
with a name, C.I. Andren
nothing more,
so much more
still anchored by two
galvanized stud nails,
still pointing the way to
a place long since gone,
Times well remembered
I could turn down that road
drive by what was
puzzle over, sigh maybe
over the ingrown modernity –
new opulence of now
But there is no logic
nothing at all to be gained,
plenty, I know, to be lost
in forcing the square
remembrances of nostalgia
into the round hole
of progressing time
Steady on the gas
I simply smile, keep on
driving north
knowing what was, still is
always will be
simply because
I know a sign
when I see one.
– Mark L. Lucker
© 2018
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd
Ponderable polemics, poetic 