Taking the Long Way Home

Bio

 

Mary Rohrer-Dann is a writer and painter living in State College, PA. After a long hiatus from publishing, she is again sharing her work with a wider audience. Most recent publications include Vita Brevis and Literary Yard and are forthcoming in Flashes of Brilliance. Two earlier collections, La Scaffetta: Poems from the Foundling Drawer, and Accidents of Being, were adapted to stage by Tempest Productions, Inc. and produced in NYC; State College, PA; and Philadelphia.

 

Old World rules weaken
with citizenship, marriage.
But it’s the driver’s license
that brings her lightness.
She explores her new country
in a red and white Ford Falcon,
white-walled tires glossy as wings.

Beneath her wheels, miles
Disappear. Years.
She loses two husbands, two homes.
Finally, her license.
She lives now behind windows
that let in light but no air.
She turns and returns
to old wounds, resentments.

But when I visit,
we go for a drive
and her rage yields
to winding roads, tunnels
of green. Burdens crumble
like the fieldstone barns tumbling
to goldenrod and chicory.

Chin raised, she is back
in the red and white Falcon,
keen to see where the road
takes her, riding it
like a hawk rides air.