Forgotten Roads

Big Sky Road by Ella Wilson

You love to walk the forgotten roads,

the ones with weedy, overgrown shoulders

and missing road signs,

orphaned roads

that let you turn down the volume

on the clatter and chatter,

 feel the earth under your feet

and watch cloud shapes coalesce above.

Forgotten roads

let you take time

to remember

your name.

They don't hurry you

to get anywhere;

they honor you

right where you are.

Even as the milky clouds 

grow ashen and somber,

you walk.

You walk 

as raindrops tease,

then course down in a cavalry of wet.

In the petrichor

you smell the birth of another chance

and feel yourself

cleansed of artifice,

shining like a new penny

on the asphalt.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Ella's Edge