Driving Through Fidelity

Driving Through Fidelity

Returning to my wife

after a night in Kansas City

I can’t help but smile

driving through Fidelity,

a small town north of Diamond

just of I-44. A glance

reveals a peeled signboard —

Fidelity Insurance —

promising a coverage

far too good to be true.

I pass long rows of irises,

reminded of a woman who

herself like a flower —

the subtle fragrance, seasonal

attraction. It’s not exactly

loneliness I feel

when we’re apart, but more

a kind of longing, as if something

were missing — a bee without pollen,

a lark without a wing.

Somewhere between the birthplaces

of George Washington Carver

and Harry Truman, men

faithful after their

fashion to the Peanut

and the Atom Bomb,

I think about the crazy

creatures we’ve become —

our constant contradictions,

predilection for metaphor —

towns name after conditions

for the lives we share and are.

This late in May, a road

could lead most anyplace,

hapless as magnetic tape

unspooling in the darkness;

instead it draws me closer

like a distant melody

lisped across the decades

sotto voce.