Driveways

The sheriff's deputy told my grandmother
That the length of her driveway would keep intruders away
And it is true that it was long and curved upward like a snake to the top,
Where it curled around to find rest at the tail end.
Sometimes strangers would drive up as if they had been lost, or so we hoped,
And tires scratching the fresh gravel that the county laid every so often
For no other reason than that my grandmother asked them to,
The strangers would turn tail and run back down the driveway as if they had seen enough
Or completed their task or realized their mistake,
And the county had no problem with my grandmother's requests for paving,
They recognizing her place in her world,
She having taught half to two thirds of them in fifth or sixth grade,
Or maybe their parents, or she may have gone to school with their grandparents
Or attended church either in town as a child or without as a married lady;
And everyone knew Ms. Elsie, or so it seemed,
As she lived peacefully in residence at the top of the hill at the top of the drive,
Safe from intruders and the hoipoloi who drove down Dunlop Lane
At all hours of the night and day
Or the idiots who flew past on Interstate 24
To who knows where or who cares.

And so she stayed regally perched on the highest spot of her realm,
After my grandfather died,
Until the stairs to the bedrooms upstairs were too much for a lady her age
And the distance of her drive prevented her from walking down to check the mailbox on foot,
Her daily procession scaring up the rabbits and the squirrels in the trees along the drive
And the quail and doves, who shared her realm, at her consent,
Until some friend with beagles or a birddog would set them loose in the Fall
And bring them to ground with so much moaning and baying and buckshot.

And now we loiter here without direction,
With only the vision of whiteface cattle in our minds
To replace the yearning low of those same cattle still stuck in our ears
And a whisp of wind that reminds us of her place in our worlds, or perhaps we in hers,
Since it was she to whom we came to pay homage,
Up the ribbons of interstates, down Rossview Road past the Connells
And down Dunlop Lane to her driveway, long and winding,
Always safe and secure, with a light on,
Even if she was asleep in her chair, waiting for the motor's sound to wake her
Or the sound of our bootsteps on the front porch,
Followed by that open door, always open to us,
To rest in our grandmother's beds again as before.