The Long Way Home

 The Long Way Home

Gina ran away one fall
On nothing but a dare,
The promised warmth of southern skies
Was waiting somewhere there.

They said that summer lingered on
Where ocean breezes roamed,
While winter gathered in the north
Around the streets of home.

"Bring swimsuits," somebody laughed,
"Bring sandals for the shore."
But Gina owned no clothes like that
A city girl to the core.

She was New York through and through,
Just sixteen, wild and bright,
And when she crossed a crowded room
She seemed to gather light.

Four girls cut class and hit the road
Instead of school that day,
Chasing freedom down the coast
And throwing rules away.

They thumbed their rides through Newark first,
Then farther south they went,
Living on the kindness found
Wherever fate had sent.

Gina prayed that Lucy would
Be home when trouble came,
For someone had to know the truth

Behind each borrowed name.

The stories spun to hide their tracks,
The lies they thought would last,
Could never stay ahead for long—
The truth rode hard and fast.

And where was Katya on that road?
Perhaps she wandered still,
Not running from the dark so much
As learning how to will

Her way through it.

Three days passed.
Baltimore at last.
A holding room.
A waiting gloom.

Detention walls and anxious hours,

Four runaways shut in,
Till someone called and someone came
To gather them again.

Lucy did what Lucy could,
Steady, wise, and kind.
She gave the look grown women give
When worry fills the mind.

And had it ended otherwise,
Had fate not stepped in then,
Gina never would have met
The man she'd meet again.

But that comes later.

Back then they rode
Like concert kids at play,
Certain they could leave the world
And simply drift away.

As though four girls could disappear
For just a weekend's roam,
Then call for help when funds ran low
And find an easy home.

As though a parent, scout leader,
Or some patient soul could come,
To claim them from the road they chose
And drive them northward home.

Back through miles of autumn rain,
Past every mile they'd flown,

To face the thing all runaways
Must someday learn and own:

No matter how far south you go,
No matter where you roam,
The longest road a runaway walks
It's the long way home.

Lucian

Lucian

was a gentle ghost

who sometimes forgot

that he had died. He wandered Central Park,

that green heart of Manhattan.

A few could feel him there—the painters, the dreamers—

though they could never quite answer back,

and so his loneliness learned to listen for light.

Lucian carried armfuls of stories,

for he had been writing a children’s tale when he left the world.

So he hurried after one child, then another,

offering adventures like bright kites, and for a little while they laughed with him.

Now and then, a day opened like a window, and he made a friend.

Adults could not hear him, and often led their children away, but wonder, once awakened, was not so easily sent home.

 

Louis was another such boy,

lost in a car accident,

who woke believing

he had only risen out of a hard dream until memory returned

with morning’s light, and yet each dawn grew a little kinder.

When Lucian found Louis, they ran through Central Park as if the wind had claimed them for its own.

The squirrels stared as though the world had briefly sung out of tune,

then blamed it on the breeze—for even doubters sometimes bow to mystery.

 

There were others, too.

Many drifted through Grand Central Station,

lonely souls still hoping for a conversation,

but most people could neither see nor hear them.

Strangers passed through them

as if they were made only of weather,

sometimes a hundred times in a single hour.

Even so, memory did not only wound them; it kept their names alight.

The sensitive ones still felt them—the poet mid-line, the actor in a pause, the artist turning toward a shimmer they could not explain.

 

They were rare, but not so rare that hope forgot them.

And when the skies darkened,

the ghosts would gather close in the tunnels,

not only from fear, but to keep one another warm,

wondering whether the hand above them

might still be on its way,

to lead them toward whatever meadow waits beyond,

whatever bright country that may be.

And if they were meant to linger here a little longer,

they would learn, together, how even this in-between world can hold a little dawn.

 

The Hound Dog

I’ll never forget that snowy winter morning when I was ten. At seven a.m.,  it was still dark, and frosty outside, my Dad would crack the upstairs hall window and stand there smoking his Kent cigarette staring into the blackness, waiting for the dawn.

His deep, throaty Guten Morgen Cornelia, exhale matched mine as I echoed my answer,

Morning Dad, close that window, its freezing I can see my breath!!  Mom tell him to close the window, we are ALL going to get sick!

KURT, Connie, Angie come look; Mom screeched from the Kitchen; I just saw the hound dog!

I beat them into the kitchen  as Mom continued to wave towards the window, as her eyes grew wider. She was so excited, I thought she would burst.

What, I countered?

The Hound Dog, the HOUND DOG!

Okay Mom, back up. What hound dog? The neighbor’s dog? What dog?

She shook her head emphatically and said

The Hound DOG has no shadow! 

That means Spring is coming early this year.

OHHH!