Stop the car in a place
where, if you slow down,
you’ll see a fox cross
the road. I pull off
on the side of the road
where some teens and
college kids home for the
summer sneak down a
path they assume no one
else knows.
Crushed beer cans are left
on the side of the road
that cuts through the state
park where the fox crosses
every morning, and I
hope none of the college kids
have declared ecology or
Environmental Science
as their majors.
Stop the car on the road side
in the kind of place where
those who take city buses
might
stop,
laugh,
and imitate
someone playing a banjo.
Pull over on the side of the
road where rock and gravel
turn into concrete
with cracks and holes,
and a good driver swerves
to the other side if
no other vehicles come.
Stop off on the side of the
same road that cuts through
the state park where I used
to drive my daughter and
my son to school, and now
I only drive my son.
Only one block down from
where the state park ends
and a road out of a story
about a house in
Appalachia where no one
within forty miles goes
near unless they take
the back roads they
assume no one else
knows, a foundation
sits, cracked, on top of
a gravel hill where ten
years before an
abandoned house was
there.
Stop on the side of the gravel
road in a time that doesn’t
seem so long ago when my son
and daughter argue in the car,
or my daughter, Corrie, urges
Hayes, who makes noises
at times as a part of his journey
through autism, to make those
sounds. He knows not to, and
she laughs like someone hits her
in the gut. She thinks it is
funny instead of feeling hurt.
Pull off on the roadside,
roll the windows down,
hear the crickets and the
birds whistle at sundown.
I smile and say, “This is
where the wild things live.
Go ahead and go out.”
“No, mommy, no,” Corrie
says, “I don’t want to.”
“I want you to feel free
to be yourself,” I say.
“Here is the perfect place.”
“Mommy, we’ll be good,”
Corrie says. “Hmm,” I reply
as I start the car, and pull
away from the gravel road.
Now
as I stop
on the road side
on a drive I need without my son
right now, and on a road side where
I need to hear her laugh like there
was something in her gut and,
to her, it was funny.
I wish it had never hurt.
I wish for road sides,
and that the tumor had
never stolen her life.
Pull off on the road side
where I pick six Tiger Lillies
growing between the state
park and the paved road
with holes careful drivers
swerve around. I hear her
say, “Pick this one, Mommy.
We need six, and not five.”
What I’d give for her
to be with me on
the roadside.
By Rebecca T. Dickinson Copyright R.T. Dickinson, 2021
Corrie's Season 