Further Down the Road

Further Down the Road

Every trip eventually

takes me back to that one, its

eternal highway unrolling

a black and white flash through the smoky night.

Your yellow eyes shone a light down the center

as every few minutes you told me,

“Just a little further to go.”

No forgetting that road trip

in a borrowed black bus with the band in the back,

late and frantic, over the speed limit,

your hands hot on mine and the wheel

when with eyes shut or open

we saw more than we wanted. 

Always a little further to go,

a turnoff missed, a half-empty tank

always a little harder to stop,

ask directions since it was only

 a little further to go.

Through the windshield
that swollen moon rose, turned alien sun

poppy red in the smoke blackened night,

shining its sick ruby light,

hanging in the smog over Gary,

dreaming us on

a little further and gone.

Last night in my bed, the one

that became the destination,

 I saw that husk of moon again

without windshield or window, closed  my eyes

on the castle'd smokestacks shooting fire

through the restless wall.

So many trips since then

so many other hands on me and the wheel.

Yellow desert days, white nights,

mountains like songs, forests of rain,

green gardens blowing bantam sequins of life;

but that bloody moon's a bright brooding still, 

a celestial fixture that hangs itself scarlet 

in every sky. And I

have

just a little

further to go.

December, 2010

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry


Based on a fragment from 1973
Image: photo by  Andreas Feininger,  1906-1999