Afterimage

I drive into a valley and mist recedes around a continuous tableau. I turn off my radio. The rushing of my car and the stillness in space and distance of farm and homestead, field, orchard, open into one continuous moment. Afterimage of distraction. I remember when I was a child and we would move into another state I would keep my eyes open on the road that separated one life from another. Who all might I have been if I had stayed in one place or another, time after time? There, a distant range, thick with forest, opens from the mist.

27 October 1985