Steven Harz / Americana Soul

My pen is running dry, but if I work wisely

and put my words in the proper order,

and don’t include what we have said to each other,

it probably still has one poem left in it.

I can write a play, one act is all I’ve got in me,

and we can rehearse our lines as they should have been,

or change our old roles into new characters

by changing the parts that led us astray.

We can sit down at kitchen table,

with poker chips and a bottle of wine,

tip our hands a little, and this time begin with

the cards that we’ve yet to show each other.

With a half-empty book of stamps

and a poorly folded glove box Rand McNally,

I can cross the county and fill your mailbox

with post cards from all the places we’d circled on the map.

Or I can walk down a winding road with a flashlight,

a flask, and a pocket full of crumbled love notes,

alone in the heart of the autumn Maryland midnight

searching the abandoned park swing set for first date clues

and reasons why we failed to get this right.

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copyright 2017

@backroadpoetry

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The ebook version of “Country Songs and Backroad Love Notes,” is on sale at Amazon for 99 cents: