Here, starry, open road
   the promise of finding God or Yahweh or Buddha
   on the highway,
the roof down, wind in our hair and dirt,
   red sand of the canyon vast around us, setting sun and personal American dream,
   drifting further into your arms and our souls mile by mile,
the burning blue of the sky ahead, inflamed by all the reds and oranges the dying sun can
    possibly bleed,
and my hand, drifting on the driving wind,
   finds its way into your heat-swept hair, soft and dark and handsome,
   all memory of cold end of '47 erased in the face of your warmth
as we fly down the street -
   I'm sorry I only gave us six decades,
   I would have aimed for more if I'd known about your untimely nightfall…
-but this Cadillac is stolen, fast, free and green;
   wheels burning hot in their devotion to carry us anywhere,  
   the leather backseat our warm and welcome marital bed,
for this, surely, is our honeymoon -
Yes, indeed, we got engaged in that small cot in Harlem,
   said "I do" on the cool, cracked asphalt of some nightly Texan road.
You promised me forever,
   swore me eternal love & friendship in your own voice,
  with your own words -
     the sweet, darkest-soul-illuminating true Western twang of your blue-eyed,
     full-and-clear-hearted vow.
What of it now?
   Where your voice? Where your face, your knees, your hands -
   Where your shoulders made strong by carrying all of
   America?
   Where your feet glued to gas pedals and roadside sand,
   where your soles -
Where your soul but up in Heaven, surely?
   Up in Heaven…

And us - him, me, her -
   left behind, to drown in ***** or go mad with longing,
   to be forgotten by the dead.
And nothing of you now
   but highway ashes and lovesick poems, black-and-white camera roll…

So we saunter up to each new prospect,
slow and sly and seductive in our invitations.
"Look at what made me this way.
Wouldn't you like to see?" More
and more until we've disrobed and dismantled ourselves
to the absolute limits of our abilities (our willingness?).
We repeat this display of sacred
shedding until we finally elicit that awe-inducing look
of "concerned understanding" -  we complain
that we are misinterpreted in Cassady fashion
when we make no real efforts to be understood.
"Care most about me." Let me mystify you with myths of me,
perverse nursery rhymes lulling you into a slumber inside my skull
from which you will wake with a start,
demanding release from that citadel you so wished to infiltrate
when it was your hands that needed warming.