The Gateway

[indarican]

The Gateway

Near the end of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike,
about a mile from the final tollbooth,
where the toll is twenty cents instead of twenty-five,
lies a small hill
snow capped with crosses
outside the Central State Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane.( strange way to start the piece, does not sound or read like poetry to me more of a comment)
The spirits who dwell there
speak silently to the passing world,
meandering among the crosses
like old lost rivers and braided streams,
momentarily eddying, as if remembering
each others’ eyes
or arms that bore deep self inflicted scratches,
some
the result of picking okra in the garden.

An occasional visitor bows a head( Is the visitor a he/she, "a head" reads funny to me)
and lifts a tabloid from the grass
where it has been abandoned to the weather.
Scanning the headline
He shakes his head and tosses the faded paper
into a nearby trash can
leaving the spirits to make sense of it all.
From his car
the white crosses
warrant an oblique glance as the road
bends gently to the left
on an early summer afternoon of ripening dreams.

I was a little thrown by this poem, It almost felt like the feeling of it was not complete. I felt like there should have been more to it. I enjoyed all the description but was unsure of where the reader wanted to lead me. Should I be feeling sad, outraged, loved