Traveler
How does any journey start?
One step? A plan? A 2 a.m. idea?
Catching a wind that pushes the tail,
the window rolled down to breath in the local flavors,
I could be anywhere:
the rounded, verdant hills of my home,
the brushed pale prairies west,
the horizontal earth south.
Eventually direction matters less,
each mile becomes not a way to leave
or arrive,
not a marker at all, really.
Food happens when you find Dottie’s café
at the junction of CR 17 and 220,
a three-calendar spot off a blue highway.
Watching one amorphous moment lapse into another,
the window rolled down to let in the aged, baking sun,
I am everywhere at once.
Thoughts are liquid during
moments like these. Silently they slip through the
built up, pent up, beat up brain, and into
the airy fields of corn,
the auburn brawn of desert rock,
the china thin pearl of Pacific fog.
Photo credit: C.M. Lynch
9 comments:
There's a powerful sense of place in this, &, specifically, American place. This chimes so well with my long-cherished, Kerouac- & Whitman-nourished images of the infinite variety of the American landscape.
"Watching one amorphous moment lapse into another,
the window rolled down to let in the aged, baking sun,
I am everywhere at once."
That is so beautiful.
you've captured something there, definitely. For me its not so much a sense of place as a sense of being in transit.
Dick--yes! It felt infinite, as though something so unfamiliar was always around the next bend. It is inspired in retrospect by William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways, another great American road trip if you haven't read it.
guatami--many thanks.
crafty green poet--I was in transit, both literally and in spirit. This poem is part of a larger nonfiction work that has been in transit also for many years. Maybe someday...
Travel does open one's mind, whether willingly or not! I love this poem - takes me on the road, however briefly!
"Thoughts are liquid during
moments like these." Oh, how true. A very thoughtful poem.
"A three calendar spot" - do please elaborate.
Liquid thoughts - happy moments. How I love to read my traveling daughter's thoughts.
:) FF--3 calendars would be good on the William Least Heat Moon scale. He writes about judging the quality of diners (the places not the people) based on how many calendars they have hanging on the wall. The more, the better. (From Blue Highways, a wonderful traveling tale.)
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