hitching a ride

clutching my singed hair for dear life

never knowing when it’d fly me out the pickup door

into this free-for-all

merry go round world

then so as another gratis ride comes to an end

so another begins

this fella from Chicago who had room in his van

was off to see his wife

“after 21 years of silence” he told me,

“headin up to Madison” 

cause she called him “honey” over the phone,

admitted to me he only wanted to fish all these years,

but for love

or guilt

or madness

he was off to take his lumps,

speeding down the studded bleak sentient darkness of the unknown,

smoking Luckies down to the butt

while layin down prayers to his 94,000 mile Chevy, 

sayin:

 “please take me safe, mama, to the end of the line”

and I was flipped right there with him

completely gassed out

all through those bluffs and dells of Wisconsin

all the way to their very end,

inhaling his stories of a life lived,

my twenty years still unfolding 

yet impatiently rushing on

way distant from his,

like a trip he made back and forth to New York in 20 hours

to rendezvous, then argue, only desert an old girlfriend,

so beat with honesty we were

could be a day will come when I’ll be found

doing absolutely anything for a sign to pause

quit my search

while I'm still alive,

ultimately to surrender to Miss Patience

but God am I hungry now,

here in the middle of another fugitive Midwest night:

an empty coffee mug

a raggy sleeping bag 

and this black and white notebook

to look forward to

Minneapolis

6/29/73