The Trail Remains Unseen - Paul Thomas Saunders

Leave the house

Your lover

And children

Take the car

Drive it down to the ocean

Cut your cards

Burn the letters you were given

In every word they swore true love was hidden

Tear apart your black suit

Cut your hair to its roots

Smoke your last cigarette

One last comforting breath

Then you howl down that road

Where all your brothers and your sisters wouldn’t go

Dream of girls that made you feel fifteen

With the palest skin

And her mother’s sympathy

But that trail remains unseen

Take the urn

Spread its ash on the garden

Every leaf will carry her love in summer

Turn the dial

Let the long wave flutter

Fighting static and song beneath the ether

Under a clear crescent moon

You hum along out of tune

Every doubt is erased

Spills out the car and into space

As you howl down that road

Where all your brothers and your sisters wouldn’t go

As the fields turn to coast

Let the water scare away all of your ghosts

Of the girls you held at seventeen

They had skinny waists and teenage liberty

All these things that you have seen

Every star

Every stone

Every soul you’ll never know

Spiralled out that great spark

To let us know that once we weren’t so far apart

From the girls that made you feel sixteen

How your brothers t--shirts hung above her knees

All these things that you have seen