I’m not lonely
But these roads are
Teeming with ants and birds soaring above
I drive on by, past them all and the clouds too

I’m not lonely
But this car is, this heart is
I miss the days when it was the other way around
When I had someone to chauffeur me

I dream of you
Standing in the tall yellow grass
Thumbs up and a cheeky grin
I don’t drive on by

I dream of letting you in
You laugh at the CDs I keep
All by your feet
But you like the music anyway

I ask of you, “Where you headed?”
You just laugh
And my cheeks turn red
But it’s not because of the summer sun

I sing with you
And you love the lyrics
To these old rock and roll songs
But we don’t part ways

I kiss you
Maybe not then
Behind a grimy windshield
But eventually

We don’t part ways
Instead, we keep each other company
In this dinged up white car
On grey-blue lonely roads

But you don’t exist
Not outside my mind
Not outside my heart
Not outside my words

So, I implore you,
That when we meet
I want our story to be
Of a happily ever after
And not a Twilight Zone episode

So,
Mister Hitch Hiker,
Do you reckon I can give you a lift?

He’s been on the road
coming home
from
Arizona flagstaff
wearing his
jury rigged knapsack
with plastic
and cloth bags
strapped together
by an orange cord.

Sixty something,
tan skinned,
and missing teeth,
I find him
on the off ramp
as I head out
to work.

Sign says Springfield
but he is trying to
get back to
Chicago.
I almost pass him by,
but I remember
a younger guy,
the good man
I used to be.
He asks me to be
kind again.

I tell him
I’ll drop him
halfway there,
but he offers
a traveler’s perspective
and excellent conversation
so, I take him as far as I am going.

We roll in
just in time
for him to miss
the storm coming,
and part with
a handshake
and goodwill,
I forgot how good
that feels.

I’m here to capture birds!
Exclaimed the hiker in the back
We’d made the call to pick him up
Along our dusty track

He spoke at quite a volume
And his statement had me fear
Just what kind of character
Was riding with us here

And it was with due concern
We were alone it did occur
As upon our exploration
Of the great outback it were

What does he do with birds?
I thought to myself and friend
By her glance I saw that she’d
Considered the same end

Perhaps he’s meaning humans
When he speaks to us of birds
Playing time to make a strike
Misleading with his words

We best get to the bottom
I don’t like the sound of this
And who the hell captures birds?
There is something here amiss

Tell us more dear hiker
For we don’t understand
Do you mean your taking photos
Of birds in this great land?

Again he answers loudly
Cameras are no match
Birds don’t sit still, so with his eyes
He considers it a catch

Things become much clearer
And I feel somewhat a fool
He’s just an honest birdwatcher
Doing it old school

And he’s from a foreign country
Dutch I hazard the guess
Are you from the Netherlands?
He replies a booming yes!

The man has quite the passion
He’s travelled very far
Just for our birds, first by plane
And lately in our car

But we are in the outback
What on earth brought you here?
Twas by the train with a few stops
For rare birds that I could peer

This hiker most impressive
Tell us more of what you’ve seen
Speak of rare birds you’ve captured
And places that you’ve been

I have been to Epping!
Loud and proud he is again
I stayed with a friend
And caught your fairy wren

I have been to Capertee
And nothing could be sweeter
Than spotting a rare endangered
Regent Honeyeater

I’ve been to Lake Menindee
Full it’s quite the site to see
But pretty rainbow bee eaters
Are what appealed to me

Outside of Broken Hill we were
When our paths converged
We to spot rare flowers
Him to capture birds

We reached his sanctuary
And dropped him at the gate
Sorry that we couldn’t join
The day was getting late

We made for sculptured sunset
He waved grateful, on his own
As we drove off, we wondered
How the hell would he get home?

Droplets of sweat flattened on our foreheads under the weight of a mid-August sun—flattened into ovals of sticky sodium, catching specks of stray dirt swept into the air from the passing semi’s and transport trucks, whipping the wind into torrents of chalky highway dust.

Pressed high against the skies curved plain, we used our thumbs to browse the passing cars like pages of an anthology enclosed by a narrow spine of asphalt.

But when one pulled onto the shoulder and we approached the passenger side window, we too were ****** with the expectation and appeal of a library—mutually eager in the labour of conversation for the currency of experience.

For a moment, as the prairie receded in the side mirrors, our car became the baseline of a frantic cardiogram, crowded by the landscape of rising granite walls and low-hanging canyons, and the space between our separate lives closed like parallel lines drawn by gravity to a magnetic core.

We pushed our destination west, as far as it would go, safe on the heels of expectation. In motion the passing towns crackled like neurotransmitters firing signals over axons of black asphalt. But each time the car slowed to release us, one more they faded into a rancid stasis, that, once more, we aimed only to depart.

The man beside me, he spoke in staccato sentences – as if his lips had forgotten the shape of words.

He said he’d been walking a long time, with a hungry thumb stuck out into the road, grasping for the wind beside passing cars. With tired eyes he watched them move on and blur into the faraway horizon.

He’d spent many days out there beneath the meat-eating sun, hoping to find himself in the shade. By night, he slept beneath blankets of stars and dead leaves.

A ghosted-out drifter upon the loneliest roads, appearing only in the transient headlights, and then gone.

I asked him where he was headed; he said it wasn’t what pulled him, but what pushed him instead. There was no beckoning light. He said the shadows, they snapped at his heels, and there was something in the deep lines upon that weather-blown face, like country roads – and I believed him, and kept my foot down upon the pedal.

He said a lot of things, in that strange, broken way. He said a lot of things for the longest time, and then for a longer time still, said nothing at all.

I’m not sure which was worse.

When backpacking, there are certain
rules that everyone knows like
take less than you can carry;
   you’ll pick up things as you go.
Be careful when hitchhiking;
   follow your gut instinct. Always.
Stick to your budget;
   you don’t wanna run dry in Kansas.

What no one actually tells you is:
   Don’t fall in love
      with a town or
      with a boy in a town.

Oops.

A boy who is settled and nestled in a town is dangerous.

The other roaming, free-loving boys are fine, because
   they understand and you understand
   that, like a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, your
   both freebirds who must be traveling on.
These boys are easy to love and set free.

Townies, on the other hand, are like rose-colored poison
which seeps into your every thought,
   but then you don’t really mind.

They show you that their quaint little town
doesn’t just look like magic.

   It is magic.

They show you that there’s something beautiful in
   greeting the mailman with
      “how’s the wife?”
   the charming town diner
      where the pie is county-famous
   the declaration of love on the water tower
      written in red spray paint.

The boy shows you how to fall in love with a town,
and in the town you fall in love with the boy.


They should start printing warning labels on backpacks:
      WARNING: don’t fall in love with a boy
      who is settled and nestled in a pint-sized town


because he will clip you wings.