There are few stars brighter than those of highway miles
and even fewer silverhaired memories of night
that can shine beside Oregon, California, Arizona
and her wooden teepees who are unwelcoming in the still
of a night filled only with snow of high plains
and exhaust fumes
which fill the moon with only a longing to drive
and to sleep.
We drove the windy wet roads of Alabama, Mississippi,
to roll into the thick Memphis canopy of fog
of orangeglow streetlamps and neon of bars.
Like a flood, the rains had come down off the hills
as we drove deserted mountain scenes
which led to town.
I had driven those dirtpaths before –
the dog on the seat
asleep beside me,
snow starting to fall,
and the girl sat in the closed house
waiting for me to walk through the door.
Beale greeted us again with a sigh and a whisper
of Sunday night
almost all bars closed
save for the one She and I would visit
and sleepyeyed drunk
drive from there toward home.
We met midgets in Arkansas
and picked up bulletshells outside lonely gas stations
where a tired bearded man lived with his wife
in back
where she had made a sad sling
out of old blue jeans
for his arm
chewed in a thresher.
Through Arkansas
I could only think of the town of Gilbert
with her 5 trailers
permanently bolted to soft clay
and grass sprouted around still and rotting tires
and the small restaurant full of yellowed
wallpaper shreds
fried chocolate smells of bakery
and kitchen and pans and pots
smiling waitress and old men
eating their dinner by themselves
and a newspaper two days old
and could only think
of the canyon walls
red and falling in dust
around the Buffalo River
which in the morningdew of Spring
a dog would find cold and fast
and a dreammind family would smile
at the coming sun.
John picked wildflowers for her in Oklahoma —
a child again hopping through the muddy banks off the interstate
in love with the soles of his boots,
the beard of his face,
and life.
And in the cold of Oklahoma night,
meeting young waitresses
with smiles of mid-America prairies
and cities bombed out by her sons.
We saw the city building
and the dolls laid at her feet
in remembrances of daughters and sons killed
with dreams unfulfilled.
And straight on through that night
crossing on into Texas
of broad landscape
shortened by border
thank god
for there’s no rock and roll allowed in Texas
nor an electrician available
to turn off the blue neon crosses
of Texas plains and cities
which stand and stare
and remind us of all we have lost.
The 18 hours, 85 m.p.h. rolling which followed
was like a shooting star at midnight dream of
New Mexico
three hours to rise again and cry
for happiness of that which is before us
1200 miles all stretched out and open like the canvassmind
of artists dead and born again
and tears for what had been left behind:
a mother holding cakemilk,
a father holding back,
and for the other,
a girl and memory of six years gone
and dreams of California.
Where we were greeted with smiles
and beer, cold spaghetti
and stories of our lives separate and apart
for those few months and distance
away from sand dunes three stories high
overlooking the Pacific
under sun.
The rising Oregon sun sung me to tears
of a country I had not seen in twenty three
nor a lifetime.
It sung of sad faces on airplanes
taken to see some other country not ours
but a mystical eye of dreams
dreamt head resting on pillow
in some little town in Belgium
rather than the starched pinesheets
of a Little Bit, Oregon hotel
after the floods have come
and washed the bridges away.
We drank coffee in that coffeeshop
with The Poet spinning goldenweb toothstories
to a haggard man, more tired than us,
with gums that smiled for him as he listened
to two Florida boys excite themselves to sweat
in the cold of trees
and steam from the coffeepot
and the sound of smoke as it slips through tired lips.
And finally,
on the plane home,
I could see the ground
and, reflected in the lakes and rivers below,
I could see water shine the Texas moon
and I remembered driving on past morning
and into the rising sun.