Notes on the Interstate
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
Plain white church off the interstate, behind a billboard advertising economy rooms at the Super 8. Shiny metal septic tank out front at the parking lot’s edged. Houses – small ones – peaking over bleak hillsides onto fast food drive-thrus and the lazy main stretch, a small roadside town gone by in flash behind the wheel as if it were imagined or magic. Back to empty dead fields pilfered last fall and giving abundant life (and people like me someties saying you have to look around for evidence that there is a higher power.)
Diesels climb the interstate’s slopes on all 18 wheels. Blue skies on another billboard for the Ramada with a photo of feet draped from car window. No shoes on and obviously summer. Land still scarred from eqipmnent that spread open the earth’s thighs for this messy interstate. Dirty cars with mush growing on fenders like crustaceans. One-dimensional cows black and grazing in terraced corn fields. Abandoned car suilk, beaten Buick, lime green from the 70s, outside a barn. Melting ice blowing back from the car’s grill into into the windshield.
The air warms as we head due south on a straight asphalt line. Under overpasses and none collapsing, winter snowstorm on the return from Nebraska truning to march warm front. Mother nature losing her hate. Warm wind from the Gulf Coast. Let me be back home before the sun goes down and it turns cold again. Buses carrying people to colder places northbound. To life and love to warm hearts and distant marriages lasting some 50 years. Wild creekbeds thawing the current strong but carrying no branches, just moving forceful along jagged banks. Trees bare like open veins. Waiting for blood to be taken or drugs pumped in with a sudden rush so that the sun comes out and color returns to verdant fields for the ponies to graze. Now they are abandoned on farms by the wealthy children who ride them when they want and the rich parents who like to pretend thay are talented. The horses drink from pails filled with rain water and leaves some frustration to be taken out about being ubdernourished. They’ll rear back and pitch off their rider. Hawks line utility poles and birds nests are in view in tallest branches. Another plain church passes. Gone again as fast as it come up over the dashboard. Goodbye. Gone to find love.
