The Long Road

by David Shumate

It’s one of those highways you come across late at night. No signs. No
arrows. Just a road running north and south. You pause. You look one
way. Then the other. Nothing. Only the hum of the engine, the chirping
of crickets confirm you are here. You can’t remember where you’ve been.
Where you are going. If it weren’t for the lines drawn through the middle,
you’d think you were drifting down a river. Or stumbling upon a path
through the sky. Remember, it is a moonless night. You are tired.
Hungry. No one to talk to. Afraid that what you were thinking might have
come true. You look to your left again. Perhaps you see a mountain. An
ocean. A lover you wish you hadn’t lost. Spirits that seem so familiar,
drifting in from the dark. You wait in that silence. It may be years before
it is safe to proceed.

 

David Shumate teaches English at Marian College in Indianapolis, Indiana. His prose poems have recently appeared in Mississippi Review, River City, Mid-American Review, Worcester Review, North American Review, Louisville Review, Atlanta Review, Maize, and on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac. His first collection of prose poems, High Water Mark (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), won the 2003 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize.