The Möbius Loop Google View shows our old yard paved over, somebody’s truck, two strange cars. Elms gone, the shabby garage replaced by another grown shabby too. I loved the logic of numbered streets, highways crossed at the periphery, Main Street’s two stoplights. On Friday night, cars crowded downtown. Men leaned against trucks while women shopped and kids ran through alleys shouting. I mention certain perfections: bikes ridden on sidewalks, clanging skates, yards I lay down in to look up at trees that met and joined over me, winds aloft but where I was warm dirt and the smell of mown grass. Maybe nowhere is safe, but I felt safe—took to the streets but knew to be home when the streetlights blinked on. I walked to the library, prowled the stacks till I picked out books that could lift me and carry me. In science class I twisted a strip of paper and glued it, then traced a continuous sinuous line up the curve of the paper. We all got away, or almost all. Yes, there was death, every year a boy who died at the wheel of a car. I’m guessing others dream as I do of drives through the dark while the radio plays.
About the Author: Barbara Daniels’ Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has appeared in Qwerty, Image Journal, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. She has received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Aerial view of a point on the edge of downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, where a number of intestate highway lanes and on- ramps meet” (2016) Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 