The Long Way

When you drive a long distance,
As when you're taking a family vacation
In your dad's station wagon,
The one with faux wooden panel sides,
Cream colored on the top,
A wide Buick,
Rack-and-pinion steering,
And a fold-up seat facing backwards out the rear window,
The drive is often long,
Especially when dad turns off the air conditioner,
Driving with the window down
At fifty-five miles per hour,
As the wind blows through the windows,
Roaring over the AM radio,
Jack Buck, Cardinals versus Phillies.

You might spend dark hours in roots of Appalachia,
Driving through Western Kentucky.
The sun may rise over Lake Superior's North Shore in Minnesota,
Or set among the mesas in Santa Fe.
Storms may throw down their spears in Central Indiana,
A single white cloud may follow you all the way across the blue skies of Kansas.

If you stop to see the Corn Palace in South Dakota,
Or the Mug Tree south of Yale on Illinois 49,
Remember that the road you travel is as much the destination
As the place you arrive,
Wrinkled and stiff-necked,
Stretching arms to the sky,
To shout, Hallelujah! I'm home!

I write these things to express that I do not like to travel
When I travel to arrive.
Accepting that the traveling is the lesson,
Though the Grand Canyon is deep,
And the Mississippi River wide at the mouth of New Orleans,
There is much more to learn in conversation with you,
Twenty-eight hours straight,
Stopping only for gas, coffee, and pee.
I'm in no rush.

The Pacific will stay.