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A bag of clothes, a box of books, another smaller box of letters and photographs & an old guitar are sitting in the backseat.


It's 3am and she's driving through the Blue Ridge mountains. All the windows are down, warm summer air billows in and sends her hair dancing. 


She doesn't know where she's going, but the warmth calls to something in her blood so she heads South. 


She'll probably end up on a beach somewhere in a little East Coast town. Maybe she'll sell flowers and jam by the roadside or find a little bookstore that needs help, she'd wash floors all day if she had to and wouldn't think to complain. 


It all feels like freedom. 


The air smells like rosemary and thyme that grow wild along the roads. The stars are so bright she can hear them breathing. A jackalope dashes across her headlights & is gone before she has time to turn her head.


She parks in the back corner of a gas station somewhere in the Carolinas & stretches her legs out the window, takes a few sips of whiskey and reads a while before she falls asleep. Lightning bugs dance in a nearby field to the voices of cicadas. 


Somewhere a voice is screaming, glass is breaking, sirens pierce the stillness of a quiet street, but she doesn't hear it & she never will again. Even in sleep she is smiling.

no idea where i am and
no idea where i am going
just a tank full of gas
and the patter of rain
just me and time and space
no plans, no destination

The irrefutable motto
Spiraling overhead
Like buzzards
Is your wife's voice
Reminding you instead
That the directions you failed
To ask for at the last filling station
Several hours ago
Have once again
Ruined a family vacation

Our beginning , like new life
was pure.

So far away are the days that like the horizon seemed filled with eternal promises to face
side by side.

First as friends,
then as frolicking fools
too blind to see the roads sharp fork
that would divide like a deep chasm.

Still, we rushed forward
on passions temporary fuel
hitting the first bump,
soon to be trapped in a cycle
of blissful agony,
like new life growing only to wilt
in the unceasing cold to come.

But, as a dead flower leaves a seed,
So did we leave scars,
that tells a tale to carry each of us
with the other as we move on.
Perhaps,
A lesson learned or a wound
to be examined on colder days,
that like the markers along
a journey
guides us going forward.

So as dents display the wisdom our once
fresh bodies did develope on our trip,

We learned to seek out bumps to avoid
and though we drive different roads
In opposite seasons,
peace floods me as
the passing road markers
down memory lane become
like the grave stone on that forking road
where I layed each wilted petal
of the flower on the dash
to rest along the road on that autumn trip.

Maybe you find your center
On a couch beside a divided highway,
Where asphalt ribbons melt together
In the beautiful mess of the day's last fire,
Where light falls on upholstery
In a manufactured Southwest pattern,
Best suited to drier air but somehow
At home on a Wisconsin shoulder,
Watching the world go by
In metallic paint and autoglass reflections,
Moving too fast to catch all the names
Of almost-forgotten rivers crossed:
Rib River,
Rat River,
Jump River,
And any number of State Name Rivers.
Or maybe you find your center
On the other side of a plume of red granite dust,
Where the asphalt ends and the rivers
Are more than almost-forgotten signs
Beside a divided highway.

If people started liking the
Journey

Better than the
Destination

Life would be a lot more enjoyable.

the sunrise was more golden than i'd ever seen it,
almost like the world was waking up.

we sat for hours,
sometimes in silence
sometimes laughing.

it didn't matter what we did,
we were escaping just long enough to see how
wonderous life is

and that's all that mattered

i was a long drive
and a short trip
in your so-called way home
where you ended up leaving
because you hated being behind the wheel