Somewhere down these old roads
there's a town where all the faces
are friendly and the storefront shops
are always open for casual conversation
by the counter in the drawn-out restfulness
of a rural drawl.
In that town, everyone would know your name
and be able to recall your history with little effort
and probably a smile and wink or two,
to boot as memories of the foolish things
that we all do come slipping back from time to time.
I think it's down the old road slipping east
across the Northern Neck somewhere
past the place where the big old tree stands
lonely at the roadside edge of a soybean field
halfway from Warsaw to Callao.
The river waters down in those parts
barely seem to move along the wide channels
and the dark waters seem still
and empty from the roadside,
but sitting on the surface in a skin
of drifting hull you can see the
wind raise ripples and the scrawl
of tides on the tall green reeds.
And though the waters may run slow down
the rivers at the ends of these old roads,
you've never seen a place so filled with life
in any teeming city or suburban mall,
and maybe down these old roads
we can learn just why those quiet towns
are more alive than us.