@3There were several roads nearby, but it did not take her long to find the one paved with yellow brick. Within a short time she was walking briskly toward the Emerald City, her silver shoes tinkling merrily on the hard, yellow roadbed.@1 L. Frank Baum, @3The Wonderful Wizard of Oz@1 She always wanted to be Dorothy Gayle - adventurous and decorous knowing how to talk to both lions and princesses - but men were not as easily defeated as wizards and gnome kings. My dear, dead Dorothy Gayle, a pheasant clatters overhead like a broken sandalwood fan. The sky is beginning to open and clouds lay lakes of shadow on the road as I drive them shore to shore. 6 AM in motels decorated with dawn, instant coffee in water glasses, her hands firm through the morning lap of red-brick towns while I tracked us - I read maps long before I read novels. On this road going up the Peninsula the rain was so heavy she had to open the passenger door to guide me to the Mackinac bridge. I hear her voice through the rain, "Don't. Don't ever marry again. They don't let you breathe." The world blooms on either side of the road two springs after her death as I drive our old route. Wild white iris ghosts the ditches and beyond the simple petals of wild rose, rainbows of lupine. Tears sit on my lower lids like birds on a telephone wire. I drive through them over the Mackinac's high span, sailboats like dropped handkerchiefs below me. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DISDAIN RETURNED by THOMAS CAREW THE BEAUTIFUL by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES TO A LADY: SHE REFUSING TO CONTINUE A DISPUTE WITH ME by MATTHEW PRIOR A MOOD by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH COWBOY'S COMPLAINT by SQUIRE OMAR BARKER THREE PASTORAL ELEGIES: 1 by WILLIAM BASSE THE GOLDEN ODES OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA: TARAFA by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT |