I’ve hobbled down this road before.
I know these turns, the cul-de-sac,
the rutted, washboard lane, the shack
perched on a rock-strewn, battered shore.
It’s not clear what I’m looking for
when midnight promptings draw me back,
sleep-walker or insomniac,
to rattle at its boarded door.
There’s nothing here for me to find;
no history worth returning to.
A single pebble in my shoe
confirms a path well left behind
when dawn illuminates the past
that wasn’t good enough to last.
Carol Taylor administers the online metrical workshop Poet & Critic . She was Administrator at Eratosphere from 2001-2007 and is an Associate Editor at Umbrella Journal. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Iambs & Trochees, Light Quarterly, The Barefoot Muse, Umbrella Journal, Susquehanna Quarterly, Alsop Review Print Anthology One, and the Open Poetry Sonnet Competition’s 2008 Shortlist Anthology.