All day I drove through Arkansas
on curved roads until I felt
I was circling home.
I arrived, at last, at evening
to a bulls-eye in the Ozarks,
to a house with pond and meadow,
shed, cellar and garden–this place
of Mother and Father. There
we took a walk down
a country lane, and talked,
got reacquainted as the light receded,
and the sun set—sending brightness
to the tips of trees.
In the woods wild grape vines
had wrapped themselves
around century old oaks. In places
the vines had grown massive and thick.
Where trees had fallen down
you could tell where they had once stood,
the coils of the vines still in place.
And so I think now that my parents are gone
part of who I am is twisted
in circles around their absence.
David Coy is a re-emerging writer. His latest book, Madame Fieldgrove’s Feelgood Tarot, will be published next year by Elk Press, Salt Lake City. He is published in the literary anthology, Manifest West, Magma, the Antioch Review, Moon City Review, and The Spoon River Quarterly.
