rural highway
at sunset –
geese remain aloft
Tag: highway
haiku 452
after the wedding
raccoon slaughter
on the highway
haiku 362
top of the on-ramp
mess of silvery fish
gleams in the sunlight
#quikfic 147
“The highway’s got to be just ahead.”
“Tim, this is the spookiest place I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah,” the ghost said. “Try living here.”
haiku 344
from the highway
emergency lights
outshine holiday lights
haiku 288
little rabbit
comes to the white line
lets us pass
haiku 196
early morning merge –
over my left shoulder
highway, full moon
Fiction: Road Kill
Jeanette saw the body first and breathed a low sigh. Her husband, Will, at the wheel, noticed but kept his eyes on the road. Their sharp-eyed young twins, Jane and Teresa, quickly spotted it too.
“There’s another one!” Jane said.
“Oh, no!” Teresa moaned. “That’s the third one since we left home.”
The car whooshed by the corpse, neatly composed in the shoulder, and yet they all got a good look at it.
“Why does that happen, Daddy?” Teresa asked.
“They don’t seem to understand what cars are. They just run out in front of them.”
“Why don’t they stay at home where they belong?” Jane asked, looking at her mother.
“It’s hard to say, dear. Sometimes they run away from home. Their families can’t or don’t take care of them. Often they just don’t have homes. They’re out looking for food and shelter and they accidentally get killed.”
“That’s terrible,” Teresa declared. “Why doesn’t somebody help them?”
“There are too many, honey,” Will said. “And you could never know where they all were to help them, even if there was enough time and money. It’s sad, but there’s nothing that can be done, really.”
There was a silence in the car for about a mile, filled only by the engine’s whine and the thud of the tires rolling across the broken and pitted highway pavement.
“He was a nice-looking boy,” Jane said. “For a boy, anyway,” she quickly amended.
“The girls we saw first were pretty, too,” Teresa said. “I hope there aren’t any more dead kids on the road today.”
“I hope that too,” Jeanette said. “But that’s just part of life. Here, though, let’s not let it spoil our fun trip. Shall we play a game of Highway Alphabet?”
The girls bounced in their seats and began scouring the landscape for something beginning with an “A.”
haiku 73
highway –
my car meets
the storm’s rain shaft
Fiction: In Sure and Certain Hope
Seven-year-old Macey Yager tiptoed through the darkened house before dawn’s first light. She painstakingly unlocked and opened the kitchen door – the one farthest from her parents’ bedroom – and ever so carefully closed it again. She walked quickly and silently down the path away from the house and barnyard and toward the road.
Once there, she ran. She took nothing with her but her memories and her hope.
*
At the beginning of the summer, Macey’s dad, Ken, came home one day with an energetic bundle of fur, a one-year-old border collie.
“He looks like a panda,” Macey said, and Panda became the dog’s name. Ken built a doghouse and put it under a tree near the house and Macey and Panda played every day from sunup to sundown.
She gave Panda his breakfast and supper every day and sat with him while he ate. She threw a ball for him to fetch. She used him as a pillow and looked at the clouds and talked to him about everything.
*
Everything was fine until school started, she thought, walking around a road-kill possum.