Road Ghosts

It’s all strewn along the

side of the highway.

The pieces of lives,

scattered on a cement

beach. Forced there by

the tides of automobiles.

There’s sheet metal, parts

of exploded tires, buckets,

gloves, the occasional shoe,

I saw a pair of jean shorts this

morning, glass, rags, whole

car bumpers, and garbage.

I’ve often wondered how a

shoe, a flip flop, a tee-shirt, or

jean shorts, might wind up in

a heap on the side of the highway.

How does this stuff pile up on the road?

How is it unnoticed by those that lost it?

I’m sure there are accidents to blame,

crashes, fender benders, and other

collisions. But a shoe? A single shoe?

Or the jean shorts I saw this morning?

If it was luggage that fell off and scattered

clothes all over I could see that, but no. Just one pair.

How did those jean shorts find their way there?

Was it a fight with a lover and out the window

they went in an act of cruelty? An act of

exhibitionism? Something dangerously

promiscuous? Were they drying them in the

speeding wind and , poof, lost them?

What about the one shoe that wasn’t there

during yesterday’s commute? How did one

shoe decide to come to rest on the side of the

highway? Who is limping around with only one

shoe, struggling to find the other? Do they not know

where it went?

The stories for the debris on the side of

the road is innumerable.  They’re ghosts.

They’re memories. They were something,

to someone, sometime. Now they’re haunting

these words, along with the roads, with

their mysteries.