Go

The culvert washed loose one summer;

the rain, relentless, offered with it a car

and the road beneath to the rising creek.

I always thought it a warning: go,

before the exits are taken.

After, every time I’d return,

I’d slide down the steep drop

of county road, tapping

my brakes, knowing

it wasn’t home, knowing

I didn’t belong there, knowing

it was a kind of haunted. Every acre

of that holler: no ghosts lived there,

only the shadows of kin

who had no light to bring.