My Road

I find strange comfort in walking the empty road where it cuts through the ranchlands.  I am accompanied only by dust and surety that I will meet no one else.  To the west, the sun knits pink fringes into the cloud bottoms.

Though a thousand roads might be accessed from my road, I require but this one.  I need the corner where my wife and I once stood together watching twin fawn deer bucking in play against the sage and green grass.  I need the hill where I had to shoo an ambling porcupine off into the juniper.  I need the long open stretch where I imagine everyone I have lost still alive in another time or place.

I don’t mind the setting sun.  The cool shadows stretching across the low hills and tall mountains beyond inspire a necessary calm.  Harbingers of full night.

Walking my road alone, I can count my blessing as if they were birds stitching flights before me.  I can whistle if I want.   And I can stride on until the stars themselves embrace me.   

—Mitchell Hegman