Sonnet sequence IV

IV. White Gravel

The right-of-way is lined with white quartz gravel,
stones that stare like soldiers back from warring
states. A shell-shocked sense of place unravels,
finds everything familiar turned dead or foreign.
Those memory highways take him ugly places
now, a flash of sun on mica, metal
glimpsed before a sudden rain of shrapnel
shattered comrades' bodies, stripped their faces
down to staring bone. He grips the wheel,
briefly adrift; clings to lane markers like
a drowning sailor to a line. It's not real.
This is not that road. No lightning-strike
of IEDs is waiting at the merge.
He still can't stand to see a white gravel verge.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside