WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD – PROMPT #44

Take a little road trip. You’re going on a vacation. Write about it. You had a favorite vacation. Write about it. You haven’t been on vacation in a LONG time. Write about it.

Or write about your dream vacation. Write about your vehicle. Write about road maps. GPS? Write about the street on which you lived. You see where we’re going? We’re on the road in one way or another. Write one more for the road!

Marie Elena’s Road:

Snippets of a Brooklyn Mission
(A daughter in crisis)

Calls in the night span nearly 600 miles
Of separation. In desperation,
We talk and pray for hours,
As schizophrenia’s power
Plots to devour her very core.

Grasped firmly in the jaws of crisis,
Dad and I turn the ignition,
On a mission only love can drive.

Finally face-to-face, we
See her palpable relief,
But this thief is unyielding,
On a mission of its own.

Her minute apartment becomes home
For a spell, as we try to slay this hell
That has claimed residence in her being.

But not all is lurid, as warm memories attest:
Love expressed as “Grandpop” meets her on the Pulaski Bridge
Each day after class, as her fragile-as-glass mind
Finds comfort in his care.

Laptop in hand, we’d snub our concerns, and
Sit on her stairs to catch our Buckeyes.
Or have a slice at Triangelo’s,
Reminiscent of Grandma’s own.

We soaked in the Brooklyn tone –
Polish bakery scents,
Market and Laundromat treks –
Nothing complex,
As we walked where we needed,
And nothing impeded our task
As we basked in the 50’s feel of it all.

Seeing through our eyes
Blew home’s breath into her setting,
Letting her fears reduce from life-threatening,
If for only precious moments.

That Fall, we followed our hearts to Brooklyn
On a mission only love can drive.

WALT’S JOURNEY:

THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW

I grew up near where the metal monsters rode.
Raised on the rumble and roar,
impressed by the power and speed.
Six abreast the rails curved around the bend,
straight and narrow the metal runs
under the trellis, Northward toward Buffalo,
to the South along the lake shore toward
Erie and Cleveland. They were the major players:
New York Central, Pennsylvania, Nickel Plate,
Erie, Burlington, B&O. Saturday afternoons
spent sitting among the corn in my
grandfather’s garden, trying to guess
which rail carried the next train through.
A blast of diesel horn, and a half wave/salute
from the engineer,  and the train continued
to high ball it to its next destination.
Always my dream to ride the big
NYC 20th Century out of town.
Born too late, the dream will
always remain just that.