Not having a car in Colorado, United States of America, means that often the act of getting from point B to point C is itself an adventure. Traveling adventures range from mountain biking barefoot across town in a dress (high heels don’t work well with pedals), to sliding down hills of slush and muck, to sprinting through the streets to make an appointment (and arrive with windblown tresses and rosy cheeks). Yet another adventure afforded to the automobile-less is the journey homeward. I’m going to school about 3 1/2 hours from home. When Christmas holidays came around I had no idea how I would make the journey. I was fortunate to stumble upon a friend who lives a mere 5 hours from my hometown, so I asked her for help. This was the plan. At one point in her trip she was going to pass through a point that was a mere 2 hours from my house. My parents were willing to go that far, so she would drop me off at that point and I’d meet up with my parents for the rest of the trip. The transfer point was a truck stop, the only one in miles and miles. My friend was hesitant to leave me there but I talked her into it. While I was waiting for my parents to show up I wrote this poem.
There is plastic ivy above me in a hanging basket, a symbol of life in the desert truck stop.
Vinyl leaves flutter and vibrate with every effort of a sputtering vent, the persistent harmonies of
heating and cooling have forgotten to stop.
Buzzing florescence, all the machines, and shuffling cashier man in his uniform, he wonders how long I will sit in this lonely desert truck stop.
As he wonders, I ask where he is going. This is a place to leave, it would be better to wait in the empty land outside. This is a place to stop and go again.
It is early morning and I have waited minutes whole and long. Time moves so slowly it stops.
He is watching my pen roll across the red table while I count the sponged ceiling squares and rabbit brush out the window. Trucks and people stop and go again.
Bells on the door audition for every customer while 22 varieties (I counted) of chips, wait to see which brother will get the axe today. I think they know where chips go when they die.
Gray sky, wickedly calm, clouds move away still. Slowly slowly they go, adagio they go.
My pack is light, my way is easy. I stop to smile goodbye to the gentle man behind the counter as I go.
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