An Old-Country Drive Poem by Smoky Hoss

On a cloudy gray
Late fall day,
I spontaneously decide
To take an old-country drive...

Trees without leaves
Line the roadside,
Dark and shadowy
Like rigid statues that see nothing nearby.

Paintless wood frame houses archaic stand
Scattered here to there,
Relics of a long past day
Lost to something, somewhere.

Like abandoned old friends of former lives
Along the way they lie,
Quietly calling out
To each passer-by.

Bach, through the radio
Gives the surreal scene deep feeling,
As I drive into this past world
With its hinted vision of life and being.

Life as old as humanity itself
Seen along this meloncholic view,
Like long memories of deeply missed old-folks
Recalled by so very few.

Who shall remember them all?
The homes. The animals. The people and the barns,
The work and the play
Of these glorious forgotten family farms.

Perhaps, it's all still there! Somewhere-everywhere...
Within the course trees, under the silent stones,
Behind the decaying boards
Of the leaning abandoned homes.

Or barely out of reach
Just beyond the recollections of another time,
Those of the heart
And those of the mind.

The crooked road is
As the houses near it, quite old,
Time like a seductive snake slithers on-
It could be now - or very long ago.

(as through this country-side I wander,
I'm ever increasingly inclined to wonder :)

Why none live here anymore?
Where have they all went?
Was the lure of city money too strong?
Is all they wanted -and made- already spent?

Do they ever late at night awake
Wish they'd stayed on the grandparents farm,
Would their own children be any wiser and safer
Out here, farther from hostilities charm?

There is no way such answers to know
With absolutely no doubt,
For who can say how anything, any different
Could have turned out?

Pondering such I drive on
More melancholy than ever before,
Longing so, to stop and look
Behind the old cracked doors.

It's then I come upon
An old weathered and worn country church,
Empty except for the blackbirds
Using the bent cross as a perfect perch.

A stasis of time
These feathered parishioners seem to be,
I look at them resolute
As they distrustfully eye me.

I realize I am the foreigner
Who doesn't belong,
They'll still be here, their home
Far after my kind has passed on.

Perhaps it was such as them
Who drove the old pilgrims out,
And now the translation of their squawk
Is a defiant victory shout.

For they and their kind are still here
And shall always be,
Long after the humans are gone
And have only left behind run down memories.

As the turning road winds its way
Into a crowded burg,
I reenter time
Far from the old world I'd just observed.

I stop for coffee and gas
On my return home,
Pondering why it is amongst all these hurried people
I often feel so very alone.

As I pull away from the station
I spy a single blackbird flying out of town,
I smile, for I know
To where he is surely bound.

Considering if with him I went
Perhaps the answers to all these questions could be heard,
If only I could speak and understand
The lofty language of the spirited blackbird.

These are the thoughts
Of an old-country drive,
Way out, where memories and blackbirds
Thankfully, are still very much alive!