Highway 10

Hopes and dreams trying to stay alive,

like an underused federal highway on
the verge of decommission,

or a railroad spur line on the
precipice of irrelevance while the
corporate office is swallowed up
whole by a bigger corporate office,

and he listens to the babbling
about following the whims of some
divine being that claims this place
as home like every other place
on this oblate spheroid of dirt
and plate tectonics,

this place where the seventh-day
advocates for the Trinity weirdly
enough are summed together
to equal the number on the
decommissioned federal
highway shield,

the highway that was
murdered off because
four lanes and faster speeds
are more conducive to the
American vision,

and they don't stop for
the mourning and non-performing,

their lives are separate,

divergent,

from the lives of the mourning
and non-performing,

and of course,

there's always an of course,

the pain is unique to only those
certain mourners and non-performers,

just like the main highways of old
when they went through cities that
defined them,

just as US Highway 10 once went
through Bismarck and Jamestown
and Valley City and Dickinson,

still there in spirit and remnant
but just a shell of its former self,

unable to build off spur roads
and bannered routes,

and only through nostalgia
can any life come from them,

what a s****y way to go.

Reviews

[roarke]

There's always this grounding of reality in your pieces. It makes a good anchor for all the flights of philosophy, anger, incredulousness, comedy and mercurial surrealism you fire off from it like roman candles.... kinda makes it not so real after all.
Some of the best pace and flow work on WC Mr. S....

[Coyote Poetry]

A lot of highways got lost to the super highway. When I was in the Army crossing the USA. I would do the side roads. Always nicer people and better food. I enjoy your story in the poem. I could see the left-over cities that were once great hubs. Thank you for sharing the excellent poem.
Coyote