Have You Seen Her?

order in Colorado:

         “what time you got?”

         “what time you want?”

                      “okay, you order first…”

                      “two of the same…”

                      “the same what…?”

after that, this cross country roadtrip’s gonna be a piece of cake…

and here’s the dessert we ordered:

with Kansas on the east, now

unbelievably ironed out prairies

flatten landscape sheet boards

rising and stretching out across America’s rhythmic universe

good thing, that Kansas,

that buffer,

that wide open song

drivin in any key,

this glass north lake immense land stretch

and at night

hundreds of miles escape consciousness

flowing exploding from all directions,

floodlights and streetlights scratching the distant horizon,

confirming civilization

confirming we are not alone

as this white struggle-wagon negotiates another American dawn,

a solitary moving metal phantom cuts through the night

blended and touched with rainbows of eternity,

and then in the next heartbeat

the land of the monster red hills appears,

thus beginning another movement

impossible to conceive from the other side of this motherland, 

a magnificent wonder damming up the breath,

a colossal wonder beaming out in unspoiled nearness

Burlington, Colorado

7/30/73