Separation

SEPARATION I left at 4 A.M. to get back, The coal miners driving fast to get past me, Knowing every pothole so well They could look up and wonder. The fog drifted, promising to lift Like sleepiness from the mountain road. Then the interstate awakened me, The coffee black in styrofoam cups That in two thousand years will biodegrade— Long before the promises, love, Which I intended, driving hard, to repeat. But at the end of the long-road day, You were not there, no note, no homemade chicken soup— Just the echoes, the thick, settling-down-again fog That made me admit that it was, indeed, you that I passed. You were going away. —Barbara Smith 65 ...