Like a great old tree, it takes the sun a long time to die. I drove down I-40 west to Amarillo. I supposed the December sun set about 4:30 or so here in Oklahoma, but I didn’t lose light until about 6:30. To the north, the edge of night overtook me as I struggled to keep pace with the soft glow of twilight. Short grass prairie pitched and rolled before me. There seemed a true dividing line between the dark and the light; the edge of shadow, the edge of light. If I could stay this side of it, then I could stay on the day lit side until I reached the Pacific.
My road soared and dove, wound and stretched around fells that swept in broad play toward the sun, igniting the asphalt like molten gold. The light of the west glimmered off the road, a mirror too bright. I left my body and become part of the wind. Again and again, I played an acoustic dirge, Can’t Find My Way Home, by Blind Faith. Why not? What are life and CD’s for? I have a greedy, adult approach to simple pleasures, hoarding them for a future that may never come. But my friend, Randy, whose grave I just visited in Kansas, reminded me through his sudden death that life is meant to be lived now, not salted away for a future which never arrives. If I love a song, play it. Play it until the spirit within moves on to something else.
The haunting words of that song and its spectral melody, the theme of not being able to find your way back home, were at odds with this road, which always seemed locked in on a course to the dusky light. A lone tree, bare of cover, reached up in black silhouette from the range grass, relieved by a flax sky. Everything in me stretched and leaned toward the falling light, which bled even my sweetest sores astray of their pain.
I fought the urge to peer into the sear sky and flipped the sun visor down instead. But it reflected in a roadside pond, and then in the hood of my car. I couldn’t get away from it. All my desire routed solely to the set of the sun. My whole world nothing but a metaphor for the gleaming tryst.
I can’t help find my way home.
© 2022 by Michael C. Just
Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.
You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23
Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002
Four of his short stories have recently been published online:
Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)
The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW
I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October
Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within