The Road

The Road

Highway sleep.
Yellow dotted lines blurring into
one single stripe. Snow falling
like space travel. My mind meditates,
thinking of nothing and everything at
the same time.

Passing under trains and suspended
bridges. We are both headed somewhere
familiar. The starry sky is torn in two by
private jets, streaking. Humans are never
content to stay still. It’s not in our blood.
We were intended for someplace else,
and we know it.

I pass the fields. The long, expansive,
empty fields. Maybe they have it right. Maybe,
we, the wanderers, know nothing. But then again,
maybe the farmer wakes up in the morning and
looks to where he cannot see
and dreams.

The road does something to me. It quiets me down.
It lulls me to sleep with my eyes still open and my
hands at 10 and 2. I think God’s really listening at
three in the morning. I think he hears me better on the
interstate. I speak like he’s really there. I say, “God,
what I really want is …” and then I pause forgetting while
the night changes from blue to black.

I never want to get there. I want to ride until forever.
Where the angle of the road is unchanging and the
grooves in the asphalt hum and drone. I am flesh and
sand, pressing rubber, turning pistons, firing cylinders
sparking fire and rocketing through space and time.
I am a cosmonaut, grinding and creating friction.
Maybe I’m the reason this big ball of blue
is turning.