Song of a Traveling Man

I flop at truck stops hid by other sleeping truckers. I like the loneliness. Amarillo, Detroit, Tacoma, Richmond, places packed and stacked with the bad and the good. I scoot by paying no heed, to features, just forms, how bodies once glimpsed sometimes return inside of me. Cities of light, death-heads hidden no one is looking. I’m not looking either — just driving through, hauling and honking. No one looking. Launderettes and liquor stores; five finger fandangos in the back, chicken wings and Jack D. Atlantic City, Apalachicola, soaking in the slipstream while America looks somewhere else. What are you watching America? Sometimes I think only the coyotes are paying attention. Roads thread through my fingers. The Great Lakes shimmer, Rockies rear-up and ripple. Moving along not looking, just driving. Old men on benches stare as I hammer on by, and blare, as if I were an 18-wheeled rolling exhibit of America itself.