<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=519832" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>An Old-Country Drive</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">On a cloudy gray<br>Late fall day, <br>I spontaneously decide<br>To take an old-country drive...</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Trees without leaves<br>Line the roadside, <br>Dark and shadowy<br>Like rigid statues that see nothing nearby.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Paintless wood frame houses archaic stand<br>Scattered here to there, <br>Relics of a long past day<br>Lost to something, somewhere.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like abandoned old friends of former lives<br>Along the way they lie, <br>Quietly calling out<br>To each passer-by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bach, through the radio<br>Gives the surreal scene deep feeling, <br>As I drive into this past world<br>With its hinted vision of life and being.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Life as old as humanity itself<br>Seen along this meloncholic view, <br>Like long memories of deeply missed old-folks<br>Recalled by so very few.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who shall remember them all? <br>The homes. The animals. The people and the barns, <br>The work and the play<br>Of these glorious forgotten family farms.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Perhaps, it's all still there! Somewhere-everywhere...<br>Within the course trees, under the silent stones, <br>Behind the decaying boards<br>Of the leaning abandoned homes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or barely out of reach<br>Just beyond the recollections of another time, <br>Those of the heart<br>And those of the mind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The crooked road is<br>As the houses near it, quite old, <br>Time like a seductive snake slithers on-<br>It could be now - or very long ago.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(as through this country-side I wander, <br>I'm ever increasingly inclined to wonder :) </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why none live here anymore? <br>Where have they all went? <br>Was the lure of city money too strong? <br>Is all they wanted -and made- already spent? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Do they ever late at night awake<br>Wish they'd stayed on the grandparents farm, <br>Would their own children be any wiser and safer<br>Out here, farther from hostilities charm? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">There is no way such answers to know<br>With absolutely no doubt, <br>For who can say how anything, any different<br>Could have turned out? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pondering such I drive on<br>More melancholy than ever before, <br>Longing so, to stop and look<br>Behind the old cracked doors.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It's then I come upon<br>An old weathered and worn country church, <br>Empty except for the blackbirds<br>Using the bent cross as a perfect perch.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A stasis of time<br>These feathered parishioners seem to be, <br>I look at them resolute<br>As they distrustfully eye me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I realize I am the foreigner<br>Who doesn't belong, <br>They'll still be here, their home<br>Far after my kind has passed on.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Perhaps it was such as them<br>Who drove the old pilgrims out, <br>And now the translation of their squawk<br>Is a defiant victory shout.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For they and their kind are still here<br>And shall always be, <br>Long after the humans are gone<br>And have only left behind run down memories.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As the turning road winds its way<br>Into a crowded burg, <br>I reenter time<br>Far from the old world I'd just observed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I stop for coffee and gas<br>On my return home, <br>Pondering why it is amongst all these hurried people<br>I often feel so very alone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As I pull away from the station<br>I spy a single blackbird flying out of town, <br>I smile, for I know<br>To where he is surely bound.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Considering if with him I went<br>Perhaps the answers to all these questions could be heard, <br>If only I could speak and understand<br>The lofty language of the spirited blackbird.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">These are the thoughts<br>Of an old-country drive, <br>Way out, where memories and blackbirds<br>Thankfully, are still very much alive!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Smoky+Hoss">Smoky Hoss</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=519832" data-title="An Old-Country Drive de Smoky Hoss" data-description="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 her..."></div> </div> </div>

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