Bob and Weave

Nowhere

32 Nowhere When there is nothing left to amuse us, doors will remain open to the street, the sun will cut into our rooms, we will sit in the shadows humming to ourselves the partial memories of songs— anything will do, even the tick of an old watch. When a child tells of the face he saw in the window of a passing car— an old face with unmoving eyes, a black car shaped like the wind in a painting— there will be laughter and speculation, his father will kneel to him eyes to eyes and praise him for his magnificent speech, his mother will lift him with a groan and call him love. When the old man riding in the back seat turns in the silence of fine leather and tinted windows to the empty space beside him, smoking the last good cigar, he will ask his dead wife Who is it that empties the streets of people and light? What is it that makes faces too thin for their eyes? 33 When a traveller comes home, lets the pack slide down from his shoulders, and finds the nearest shade of a wall, he will tell of the deaths of roads— the return of nowhere— a place without hedges and gates, beyond the reach of satellites and repeaters, thick with the new growth of neglect. ...