Too many things left unsaid.
A small cemetery skirts the southern edge of Willow Branch. White marble slabs face west, waiting for the sun to set, while a carved limestone monument in the shape of a tall tree stump glances at the county road, a stone’s throw from a small grain elevator. I’m looking at the markers all the way past.
But I don’t stop.
Wildflowers fill the ditches. Cattails rise from a marshy plot bordering farm land. Sheep crowd into rectangles of shade beside a shelter in an open field.
But I never remove the camera from my jersey pocket.
Today is about nothing but the miles. And the heat.
I see a great blue heron to my left, its eyes moving to catch the sound of me, then wings lifting it to safety on the other side of the pond, the awkwardly built yet amazingly created bird flying as if in slow motion. All the while momentum carries me forward, my mind already back on the road, no posting of notes in some mental file to be accessed later. Already tired of writing when I haven’t even started.
Too many stories still unfinished. Too many blogs unpublished. Four going back to RAIN. More never started.
So I ride in blinders. But I can’t ignore the heron. And I can’t close my eyes to the ironweed and the headstones without running off the road I’m on.
Yet I know there’s more there today than I can say.
Road bike: 30.01 miles — Henry and Hancock counties
