The first line from the poem this morning was…well, not a joke, exactly, but definitely a reference. My friend Robin has been telling me to take a drive on Southern Road (a real road, running east to west across a portion of southern Michigan) for years now.
“The wildflowers are beautiful,” she says, “It’s worth the time.”
And time and again, I’ve meant to. We go out to her place for writing group every Saturday. Any one of those mornings I could have cut further north until the northern route met Southern Road, but I never did.
The wildflowers she talked about became almost like a fable to me — “One day, in a time that was not this time, a woman set out on a journey to find the most beautiful field that ever was…”
Or, as it was when I opened my eyes this morning, like a song: “Wake up in the morning/go and find the southern road.”
If I’d continued on in that vein, instead of doing what I did, I would have written something like this:
Wake up in the morning,
go and find the southern road.
The flowers there are waiting for you,
go, lay down your load.
All the sorrow of the morning
let the sunrise wash away
out there on the southern highway
at the breaking of the day.
I’ve got a simple tune to that in my head, and I kind of wish I could sing it for you, but as a rule, I only sing to Pete, Joe, and Carla. Besides. I don’t trust myself to actually come up with a tune; it’s probably from something else.
But the point is — I’m not sure what the point is — you’re taking a drive with me, remember?
Let’s try that again. I wasn’t sure of the point of my poem any more than I was sure of the point of the day. I did the things that I do on a Sunday. Church, a walk on the indoor track at a Fort Wayne YMCA with a friend afterwards. Home and lunch and a nap and a bleary, confused waking to Pete’s paw scrabbling at my shoulder and cheek. He wanted out and food and a walk and more food and he had to pee and why were we sitting around all day on a perfectly good day and should he chew up the pillow? Or would I prefer a shoe?
I took him and Joe for a walk in the city park. It was cool but sticky. Storm clouds were gathering over the high school, and, at one of the picnic tables, a family was having Domino’s pizza for dinner. Pete asked if he could have some; Joe peed on a nearby trashcan; I took them home.
And then, not knowing exactly what the point was, I set off on a journey. I drove the northern route, winding out past old barns and roadside restaurants, open or not, it was hard to say. The signs hanging out front had rusted; the paint was chipped; “Now Hiring All Positions” either hopeful or wistful; I drove on.
I drove like a woman in a fable, searching for the fork in the road, the sign there that would point me, at last, to the point of my journey, whatever it was, on a Sunday I’d somehow let slip away.
If anyone had been behind me when I came, finally, to that crossroads there might have been an accident. But the whole evening had, by that time, taken on the aura of a fairy tale. The road was empty. My sudden stop, the U-turn back to the gravel parking lot of the tiny country church hurt no one, was witnessed only, perhaps, by the black and white cat disappearing into the field.
And there lay the field. Sun was pouring down out of lifting clouds. Sun falling in rays like they do in those paintings that don’t seem real. And golden fields rolling out and out, the most beautiful field that ever was…
You know, when I was kid, my father used to tell me stories. He could make a story out of any old thing. Children doing magical things. If I said, “Daddy, tell me a story,” he always could. And tonight when I drove out on the northern route until it met the Southern road, I had to grab some paper towels out of the backseat to stop the tears that came because, all of a sudden, again, my father was gone.
Except, one day, a woman set out on a journey to find the most beautiful field that ever was and when she found it, her father was there, a little, saying, “There now. You see? Every day is a story.”
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