Destination Unknown

Michael Brockley

Inspired by Ernie Barnes

The distance between railroad ties varies with each step I take toward the gray sky and the hill I hope to cross by nightfall. The switch in my right hand is the last switch I’ll ever cut from a hickory. I cover the left front pocket of my jeans, still protecting twenty-seven singles folded within a sawbuck. The harp Uncle Night Train left me polished and tucked in the pocket of my traveling man’s T. I’ve got blues in my footsteps, and high lonesome songs groomed from dreams seventeen years gone by. Dreams that swirl like a sweet fog in my mind. Neither Baltimore nor Wichita makes any difference. All I need is a jump street corner with a cigar box scavenged from an alley behind a tobacco shop. A  busker’s paradise where I can hustle enough Lincolns and Washingtons to buy a blue fedora with a red rooster feather jaunty in the hat band. I’ll take my chances with whatever luck I can find in the night.