The Road

I drive that same damn road, that dusty stretch of
decayed asphalt my father drove when he was the age
I am now. But he had a twelve-year-old son back then.
The road is in a different place, a different state,
but I drive it every day, looking for the same cross street
he tried to find, the side road that might take me someplace
else, someplace the pavement isn’t so full of mistakes,
somewhere fewer shards of sharp and unyielding
memories are embedded in the roadway.  A place where
the sidewalks aren’t just broken and brittle scabs,
unhealed wounds hiding worn footpaths leading nowhere.
He was looking for a place where the car’s tires,
spinning like the face of an unfriendly clock,
could take him back to twists and turns in the road
that didn’t feel as final as the deadman’s curve ahead.