If I Were a Lonley Highway

If I were a lonely highway
I would wonder up and down
these gilded autumn hills
and hollows
that hug the curves
of
West Virginia Mountains,

meandering here and there,
past cow pastures,
and log cabins,
and
abandoned mine shafts,
forests thick with Christmas trees,

looking for,
searching so desperately,
for the love I lost here
many years ago
and didn’t know I couldn’t live without
till it was too late.

Bright lights called forth from cities
with
bejeweled neon crowns
calling me away from what was comforting and familiar,
adventure and mystery promised,
yet unfulfilled.

Too late, I recalled
the crow of the cock in the early morning dew,
the crunch of autumn leaves,
the smell of green grass now traded for cracked concrete.

If I were a lonely highway,
I would shed this hot asphalt like the skin of a shiny black snake
grown too big for his britches

and then...

wander these lonely country lanes
as the dusty, unpaved dirt road I was
always meant to be.

Dreaming,
I lick my dusty lips
and peddle away
into the purpling shadows
of the
hills from
whence
I
came.