Myriad Miles Down the Roadway (Returning To Dad’s Alma Mater)

Flat roadways stretch endlessly

across the campestral countryside

of memory-rich Ohio, sparsely lined on 

both sides by dilapidated barnyards,

Mennonite-owned, past-preserving plots, 

and fifty-year-old homes whose histories 

are etched into peeling walls; whose 

door-knobs are imprinted with

fingerprints of previous inhabitants.

The same white-dashed grey road

extends as far as eyes see and

intellect discerns, stretching on the back-

wards and forwards in perpetuity;

only the perfunctory mile-markers, ticks of 

time, ever change. Memories are dents in 

the pavement, lasting marks remembered as 

vast, irreparable potholes but, when revisited, 

found to be only visible to the passengers of 

the car that struck asphalt and created them.  

Exiting the interstate onto a once-warm, now

Shade-draped small town and campus, he 

recommences his dance with the spirit

 of the school. But in his arms its lifelessness i

is felt: the robust figure he once embraced

has since atrophied to a meek caricature 

of itself. Swarms of  curiosity-rich, lawn-sitting 

students are dispersed. The remaining is only the 

occasional blip—  a trio ambling by, 

without the energy to sit on 

and warm the starved grass.

Staring back at him are the same 

buildings, his memories, albeit faded, 

still carved into their facades; yet somehow

the whole sight is distorted. Before he lies  

the image he’s tattooed on the backs

of his eyelids, but it's incomplete, drained

of life. Grassy quads are still torn up

by his once-smooth, fidgeting hands as he 

sat in talking circles, basking in the warmth 

of humanity; but their greenness has given 

way to tawny yellow;  their buzz and chatter 

to utter silence; their sunny warmth to icy shade.

Returning to where the sun once shone, 

the memories etched into walls have dulled 

to barely discernible engravings; the 

thumbprint-impressions are as insignificant

as mile-markers to the few supple hands 

who now grip doors and dig fingernails 

into walls, carving themselves into plaster 

and impressing indelible but invisible 

fingerprints into doorknobs, prints 

imperceptible to hands from before

and after, only to be wistfully 

recognized by some age-dried hand 

myriad miles down the roadway.