Driving Backwards

Exit 17
I wake up from a dream
of white and yellow lines
of hard and steady beams.
Nod goodbye to 95
the sloping shoulder of the road
beckons me to follow it.

There’s a door I haven’t opened in a while,
and a bridge I haven’t crossed for years,
where a house or two still looks the same,
where my youth is trapped in tree lined streets.

Palpitations
at certain intersections,
dusty beaches and empty lifeguard stations,
parking lots where we avoided direction,
where we drank and smoked and kissed.

There’s a deli on the corner
where the owner knows my name,
there’s a school and a run down barber-shop
that always smells the same.
Cigarettes and memories,
shaving cream and magazines,
the strands of hair they clip away
from faces that age in the mirror.

Circulating,
the summer breezes lick the sea grasses,
where my dog ran through reeds cracking
and we bled for august blackberries.

I carved your name in an aging willow
in the 1990’s on a clear June day.
The tree is gone and so’s the name,
but the field and the feeling remain.

There’s a place that I took for granted
that was as new as the touch of teenage lips
Hills that rise from the bed of the sound
and lure me with their soft round hips.

Imperial Avenue is waiting,
waiting by the river.
Greenfield hill sits there still
resting in the shade.
Southport Harbor’s mansions stand,
proud and stately matrons.
Pieces of my past life
are scattered in Rowayton.

Exit 18
has turned into a dream
this town that makes me wonder
if the world is as it seems,
spinning onward into space,
a steady flowing stream,
or if we’re always moving backwards
to the place where we were kids.