DRIVING BACK TO NEW JERSEY

Raindrops hit the windshield
A thousand souls
Clog the highway
The loose change
On my dashboard
Will soon be used
To appease the angry gods
Of the Garden State Parkway

I have my St. Christopher
Hanging from the rearview
He protects me in travel
From lightning and toothache
I drive the winding highway
To the place I was born
Where locals surf the ocean
Under the white burning sun

I drive the dirt roads
Out past Warren Grove
Through seas of pygmy pine
Of old black jack oak
Where sheep laurel blooms
In the white sugar sand
Where the dirt's colored red
And fire sweeps the land

I follow the bridge
Across The Mullica River
Where brackish blue water
Bleeds through green grassy delta
Where the laughing gulls nest
And the blue heron rests
Where the watery veins
Seem to snake on forever

The house I grew up in
No longer stands
It was fallen by progress
Not by storm or by sand
The shed my Dad built
Is all that remains
The gardens - all gone
White stone in their place

The old shed remains
Holding its place
As time marches on
As the sun keeps the days
It stands in the shadow
Of a time, now gone
When men and the ocean
Still sang the same song
Where the locals lived
Hand-in-hand with the sea
And their veins, like salt water
Snaked their way to the sea.