Laura Ruth

 The day Laura Ruth disappeared from the Bascomb Norris bridge

john clare stokes

It was your typical mid November North Florida kind of Friday,

The local team was in the first round of the playoffs,

A liberating sort of autumn day,

Where according to the rules, the reserved seats must be open to general admission

allowing the Five Pointers to sit among the Marion Placers,

Annoying them with their cowbells and raucous cheer

while down by Lowes the same reserved seat er's were posing for the ribbon cutting 

The opening of the final leg of the loop around the city

A thirty-three year affair just to go around town.

It was on this road named for her daddy on this bridge over the East-West CSX she stood

looking East toward the' we kill 'Animal Shelter's continual howling.

Before this section through the chain of lakes to Lona, she could avoid the noise by going around Lake Jeffery,

And this troubled her beyond convention, 

Akin to the slaughter of the elephants,

Or the caged creatures at Swampy Rusty Acres,

Tenacious to the point even her cousin next door distanced her.

In the west near Columbia  Grain from this height she could see the approaching light

Hear the whistling and the howling, even the ribbon falling.

She saw Bascomb and Gwendolyn and a great parade aprroaching in their Electra-Matics, fine machines for inaugural crossings.

By the time the CSX slowed in the Baldwin Freight Yards, she was reported missing, as were the myriad animals awaiting the chair.

Her little Electra parked near the apex.

Not a trace.

They placed a marker near where Kimberly Leach rests, the howls of Bundy silenced,

In sight of the tracks, in hearing distance where once the howling came, east of the bridge the reserved named in honor of her.

To the memory of a friend

Laura Ruth Norris