Three thousand miles
navigating a storm
without drop of bad weather
Abacus odometer clicks
rotating forward ―
spinning with the
world go round
Circling back down
a long and winding road;
where unforgotten memories
were once searchingly explored,
untrodden pathways
coursing way up north of alone
on the low highway
Now an aging shepherd
wonders without a compass ;
a vagabond deprived of light
from an ever blurring north star
Heart empty as a gas tank
with a broke down gauge,
running on fumes of hope
for unpromised tomorrows
Running from loneliness
just to be on the run
The gales of silence bellow
No feelings I can see ― lay me low
Wild-eyed daydreams
of Full sails billow out
through the windshield,
only hearing the unspoken
moments sigh restlessly ―
The dull droning road rumble
re-sighs renunciatively,
a tired monotone voice
mimicking the loathe silent echo
wallowing in an
omnipresent hollow void
deriding unspoken chaos
between the passing centerlines ―
A frost heave pothole erupts,
with a leaf-spring rattling thud,
as a fleeting cloud of dust arises,
set adrift with the draught
headed off the east side
of the Alcan highway:
blown way outside the lines,
towards the Alberta prairie
White knuckled steering wheel
held sway, rolling down
a beckoning wilderness
reincarnation;
default reset button paused ―
stuck in a moment ― until another jaw rattling
frost-heave pothole in the highway,
jars it free
Leaving it all behind
like a sigh breathed
in a silence a heart has outgrown;
just a fleeting cloud of dissipating dust,..
a paling whisper
the past seems to send forth
like a fading last breath
Letting it all unfold to become what it is
harlon rivers ... May 2018
... travelogue 2 of some