Rolling down the endless highway miles
hours spent in over-crowded company
dog and kids jailed among pillows and blankets,
cookie crumbs and crayons
in the back of the old Chevy station wagon,
our grey-gold, purring whistling microcosmic
world on wheels.

Montana in August went on and on, and on,
a hypnosis of sameness,
ponderous rolling grassed-over
60 mile-an-hour swells,
one long grey sage green whaleback after another,
monotonous and numbing,
eternal trance of rise and fall
all the same hour after hour.
laying sprawled on a mattress thrown
over the bursting suitcases, leaking coolers,
assorted camping gear lumps, poles and projections,
all the crap that had to go with us
to the Grandparents, to the home-baked bread and
old tales told,
LA to Michigan by the Northern Route.

Mom and Dad held the front seat
in a state of siege,
holding our horde at bay,
keeping the cookies and water hostage
against our continued good behavior,
yet all of us slave to the inflexible distances,
tortured by undeniable needs continually denied.
Oh, to run, to stretch, to pee, to smoke,
to breathe the sweet air of being alone in my own space
and to wave arms without starting a fight,
outside this World of Car.

By now, every song had already been sung too many times,
all pictures drawn, books read, game pieces lost.
Every inch had been occupied, fought over, surrendered, and reinvaded,
a seething mass of bodies, arms, legs,
whining farting restless sweaty uncomfortable bodies jammed
in that very small space, sardines of the road
back there, where kids and dogs must lie, “in the Back”.
We fought to get the choice spots beyond Dad’s reach,
where silence could not be enforced
by a clout in the head.
Who’s idea was 4 kids and a Great Dane, anyway?

I learned to fly, that trip,
escaping the steerage-reek and coffin-close,
and paced the car on effortless eagle wings and ever-racing horses,
swift silent motorcycles and invisible floating air cars,
the last gasps from my unused mind
drowning in boredom’s abyss.
Idle Satanis, Corrupter of Quiet,
Destroyer of Peace, Hater of Children.
Until then, I never saw anything like it,
a place with not even one tree,
every mile, every hour like the last,
a Hell, a Purgatory,
a television when all the stations have
gone off the air,
all grey snow and white noise,
driving forever through a Nothing of Nothings
no stimulation, no variation, no change,
no peace, no life, no death-

Montana miles in August