A Jeep In Summer

Journeys All Run Together

for Carl E. Samuelson, with thanks to Cliff Foreman for Jack Kerouac

Grass and the far away smell of magnolia come from the South to rest in this Illinois hill graveyard. I am coming home from Iowa, where I never thought I would be again. But when friends move, you visit. First you help them move, pulling the U-Haul trailer far beyond the speed limits of wisdom, taking pictures of the sunset, praying fo rthe rain to stop, smoking lots of cigarettes in the church van.
Later this summer many will pray for the rain to stop and you know what, I'll be back, driving through the remnant of the floods at midnight, guessing at the water. I'm off my bus long enough now, a few minutes, to stop for homage in the middle of this nation--lovely and crossed by roads, highways carry letters and produce, carry Washington apples and fresh Midwest corn to everywhere, carry machines and books. These roads carry love.
These roads carried you, grandfather, to me on Christmas, you drove all the way. What sermons did you think and forget? You brought pounds and pounds of wheat, and a large quantity of cinnamon that took us one whole divorce to use up. Surely I am the mad recipient of your driving genetics, for I go until I stop. Stop for gas. For coffee. For beauty. I drive so many miles, to wherever I'm going, before I sleep. I don't think, I go. I go faster than guilt, faster than my weariness, faster than is good for me. I go faster than Sal Paradise hitchiking in the back of a truck drinking whiskey with good boys and the bums of the night flying through America. Speeding on the beautiful highways. America's had a love affair with the car. Baby, I'm the child.
I drive to St. Louis just before Christmas on another trip, for all roads lead to St. Louis, and while I sleep she goes to church. And then it's across Kansas toward the mountains with a diva singing. Kansas was not beautiful, but she still is, the queen of the road. She still is.
I have come here to your stone to cry, I'm praying for the rain to stop for a minute. And it does. I have been here in the snow on the ground, searching for your place, and now I stand in the rain. I stare behind me at the beautiful that is there every day.
Will I be here again? In the real past I was home in the South on burial day. In the history I have changed in my mind I am here with everyone else for your burial, so what do I place on the stone after you have gone to sleep? A ring of hope. A ring of grandson. All the words that mean so much to me.
The back roads bring me to you. What was you. This is sudden, I stop to turn a page, and one mourning thought is gone into another. I love you Illinois.