the highway on which you escape
has a placard, green with destinations:
90 miles, 140

the 50 asphalt measures between the two
raw with hope, or despair, depending on who is there, flying past stubborn mesquite, doomed steers, and sagging shacks with graveyard stories

you always return,
not having found what
you never lost

the sign coming back
on the same tarred trail
tells how many there are, of you,
one hundred thousand, six hundred, forty two
though you may be only one who knew
you departed, maybe

tomorrow another you
will crank the engine and turn the wheel,
accelerate while you still can, until your gas
burns out, or the road rips a bald tire,
a ruptured reminder you can't
leave it all behind

words he could not understand
flew over his head--sparrows at first,
vultures as the hours passed; he

could see the creatures
spilling from mouths, eager fledglings
escaping the nest, white

coat wizards
birthed them, casting some spell
on the mother, on all

mothers who heard the flapping
of these wings, who saw the buzzards gather
until they swooped down upon

him, helpless, as their talons
snatched him from her arms, their wings
in frenzied dance, fluttering  

to a symphony of the ******
carrying carrion and soul to a bedeviled den
she could not see

every night, the klaxon
wailed, like a hound lost in the fog

Mum and I would be sitting down
to dinner when the beast began bellowing

she would quip, them Gerrys want me
on thin rations, and to the cellar we scuttled

Mum would bring a votive candle, a pale of water;
I would grab Tag, our shivering terrier

in our tiny circle of timid light, we would wait and wonder,
how far were they? what would the next sun reveal?

on All Saints Eve, the house shuddered; the dust
from its two centuries drifted down on us like fine rain

then all was still, until we fell asleep--maybe she was
dreaming of Father, and what field now held him

I was not--sleep had taken me but a moment before
our tired beams moaned and gave way

Tag was then barking through his tremors, and she lay
still in the rubble, her eyes slit open

though only enough to see I was there to bury
her, in green pasture

far from this gloom, her quivering pet  
and orphaned manchild

frogs "croaking"
in front of me, in the reeds
crickets "chirping"
behind me, in the brush
countless coyotes "yelping"
from across the lake
bass, carp surfacing
under a yellow moon
unaware its shimmering shaft’s
a magnet to my eye  
and more lullaby to me,
who can yet see spectral waves
but lost cherished vibrations--like birdsong,
winsome whispers--eons ago

no bison on the menu
at the Buffalo; this diner
never served it  

Big Mike, long gone
named it for the high shelf  
on the prairie behind it  

where Lakota learned
to stampede beasts over the edge, massacring
hordes without bow or sweat

the gully below,
their forgotten bone yard,
left little trace of them

save half a skull
Mike exhumed and hung on the wall
in the time of polio

before the wide whizzing interstates
when truckers still landed on his dusty lot  
their rolling behemoths content in pasture

in a new millennium, the cafe highway is but
an accidental detour; the shack guarded by thistles,
long departed the Detroit steel

the truckers now in the ground, their bones
free from pillage, but the Cyclops on the wall remains,
eyeing the vacant prairie they all once roamed

in blue depths beyond our sight
day or night, you flagellate flawlessly
as if you had not a care

dare I say you're fleeing
a predator we're not seeing?
or perhaps just at play

in a world Verne created,
a space ahead of its drudging time
perilous, yet sublime

loligo forbesii, I can only imagine
what watery waves you whipped before I had you,
deep fried calamari, on my plate