Old Roads
Bev Lethem Davis

 

We packed a thermos full of coffee

for the trip to Philly.  Not THE Philly,

but what Phillipsburg High graduates

now call their hometown.We called

it the Burg.  Lately, when you eat

at the Third Street Bakery, you can

get a Phillipsburger. It's big,

it's well-done and it's covered in goop

on a huge bun of white flour meal.  Not a lick

of fiber in the thing.  But it fills you up.

We think we’ll try one on arrival.

 

On the way to Philly, we drive the old roads,

the two lanes.  281 out of Russell, home

of former Senator and Presidential candidate,

Robert Dole.  And through Plainville,

boyhood home of Jerry Moran.  Both men are

Republicans.  We aren’t. It’s Republican Country,

this home state we share with them. This

doesn’t keep us from returning the wave 

we receive as we meet friendly

farmers in mud-covered pickups

traveling along the highway.  The

wave is of the first finger, barely lifted off

the steering wheel.  A sort of tip-your-hat

greeting along a lonesome road amidst

rolling Kansas plains dried

auburn under winter's sky.

 

My husband calls our old Durango

the lumber wagon as it lumbers

along carrying supplies and paint

to help my recently widowed sister

redo her full-to-the-brim house

of memory.  Maybe it will help loosen

her chain of pain and move her to more

comfortably remodel her very different life.

Losing Larry changed us all.

 

When the redo is done,

my husband and I will slide furniture back

against the walls, hammer  in nails to hang

photos of old memories

but leave room for new.

 

Afterwards, we'll take the interstate home,

slide in the Prairie Rose Wranglers cd

to cover our quiet thinking

so we don't miss  the Phillipsburger

we didn't try,  one-fingered waves,

two-lane roads, or our brother-in-law.

 

 

An Expatriate Kansan Rides
               the Train of Remembering

by Tom Reynolds

 

My trip into the vanished past

is prodded by springs in my seat,

cracked vinyl scraping an elbow,

and thirst for water, not truth.

 

This train ain’t bound for glory,

just a slow sixty miles down country,

through thickets and shorn fields,

weaving on unsafe tracks.

 

Today’s train ain’t no showpiece,

just an engine and three rusted cars,

soot seeping through cracks,

till I wonder what I was thinking

 

traveling into Kansas this way,

my life there on that Oswego farm

surrounded by woods and trees,

the slow trickle of a muddy creek,

 

crags below the wooden bridge,

a black hawk circling the hedge,

the farmhouse beyond the hill,

and despite all, enduring love.

 

I should have gone first class.

 

 

RICHES

By Greta Isaac

 

The wheat field, green and low,

Is tipped with ice. Sunshine

Lights each emerald row.

A pheasant, slow and fine

Meets the silvery green,

A solemn, flashing king.

Behind him, his brown queen

Steps high. The finches sing.

 

Five shining pages trail

This regal pheasant pair.

No plane, no car, no sail,

Can match the beauty there.

The hunters did not find

Each flying radiant thing.

I catch the glory, bind

It tight. The finches sing.