Heading East

These nights come to us
in waking dreams,
where American freightways
disappear before halogen
can find them.

We strike our recollection
on the anvil of distant
storm fronts,
break open the great sadness
of time’s passage
to find six or seven words,
then silence; the smell
of distant shoreline, rainfall.

These towns are dying on the
onyx chain of suffering
roadbed —
the faulted pavement of troubled tributaries
bypassed by larger streams.

Still the dim, gold light
of faltering mainstreets
remains amazingly bright,
and we pass through
until a world of twilight
fades into creosote again.

Distant lightning
has called us further out
into the ionized air,
away from cities
where forced light
paints with murder and with shadow.

Two comets hang
loosely over great plains,
and the arms of the galaxy
are thick with entropy
and slowing spin.

     We think of orbits;
     the rotation of storms;
     and ages end in the
     miles behind us
     where the roadway
     dies into a faint red glow,
     and taillights in the rearview
     are Perseid showers
     that dip below slight rises.

Every memory flickers and waves then,
blinks out into static
between each station.

We have spent the miles well
and lost the moments wisely,
launching our eyesight upward
from the road into the
edges of storms,
and then starlight,
the dead radio silent of
all ghost-green time,
dying signal near the sea.