I don’t want to drive back.
It will be dark.
It will be Sunday.
Each landmark
that once meant distance from
will now mean closer to.
Houses aloof with
their posture and color.
Collapsing sheds;
ceilings sinking into rooms.
Lanky machinery—
coils attached to rods.
Maybe they bring water
Maybe they move
Across the fields
that flank the single lane
funneling me
to island’s end.
I eat pizza in a deserted pavilion
with a paper cup of coffee
and read the fine print
of a Budweiser ad.
A mile later, angling
through a thrift store
I grasp a desired object
without disaster.
Meanwhile, in the back room
full of lace, bodices, and baskets
the clerk reads The New York Times.
She lives in the present.
In the dusty streets of this abandoned town
I imagine an end, fading with hands in pockets
near a love I can’t touch.
A winter ride to a summer place:
a stone thrown into the air,
weary and spent,
the hopeful arch before descent.