Her florescent cubicle
Illuminates the dark circles
Under her eyes and she feels
Her blood pulsing slowly
And steadily through
Her limbs.
She rests her chin
On the palm of her hand,
Fingers curled in,
And blinks methodically
As she turns her gaze
To the blue sky
Out the window
Which has sparse clouds
Drifting through
That blue nothingness.
After work, she drives
In her sedan
To the junkyard and finds
An old van
With beige curtains,
An old man
With beige clothes
Who has a history
Of mechanics and he offers
To help her
Get it up and ready
For the road.
For two months,
While her van reaches
Its new prime,
She collects stones and bones
And a friend with dreads
Who recently became homeless
With a duffel bag full
Of the oddest things:
A cassette player, a Bible,
A tennis ball, an unopened
Package of incense,
Three keys, a jar full
Of what she says are frog eyes,
A smoky fedora, five smelly tie-dye socks,
And a blue ukulele
That rattles inside.
She and her friend set off.
They go west, due west.
With the stones and bones
She makes rings and earrings,
Five dollars apiece.
They sleep in beds
In the van
And camp off the grid
Cooking over fires
They make in random fields
Laughing and reading poetry,
And when the stars came out,
They'd sing,
She with her husky alto,
The friend with her sweet soprano,
And the rattled ukulele notes
Drifting up toward
A dark heaven.
They travelled like this
And found secret treasures
In the land:
Waterfalls, canyons,
Bluffs, foxes,
Caves and creeks.
Every Sunday they left
The van on foot
And found a hike
With no trail or a tree
To climb
Or a little oasis to jump
Into with no clothes.
On a roadside in the rockies,
They found a small brown dog
With big brown eyes,
A collar with no tags,
And a ribcage that showed
Some of the nature
Of his life's struggle.
They named him Summit
For his power and obscurity
And he followed at their heels
And licked their faces
And she loved him
And he loved her.
Dying clothes with plants
Harvested off the grid
And eating salads of the same,
Meeting strangers on the run,
And seeing hundreds of sagging
Old buildings in small towns,
Was just beginning to become
A little hum-drum
When they were at a gas station
That smelled like cow poop
And cigar smoke
And she happened to look up
To see sitting on the curb
A man
Eating a sandwich and drinking
A bottled iced tea
With khaki pants with holes
In the knees and a brown
Bushy beard
And a tan nose
And mayonnaise in his mustache
And a blue bike on his right
And a large green backpack
On his left.
She watched as he pulled
A book out of the top
Of his large green backpack
And start reading, amazingly,
The Little Prince.
She walked up and asked him
What part he was at.
"How to tame a wild fox,"
He looked up at her
And grinned,
Licking the mayonnaise
Off his mustache.
"Where are you going?"
She asked.
"Everywhere I can,
Seeing as many things
And meeting as many people
As I can
On this big beautiful continent."
"Join us for a stretch"
She invited,
And he did.
And she
And the friend
And the dog
And the man
Ate meals cooked over fires
And sang songs under stars
And went exploring on Sundays
For a few weeks.
He said,
"It's been nice riding along
But my bike misses the road
And I miss the wind."
And she turned her face away
When a tear rolled down her cheek
When she said goodbye.
Three months later
The friend told her
About being accepted
Into the peace corps
And she'd be leaving for Morocco
In a few short weeks.
She dealt with the losses
By taking Summit
And changing directions
From west to north
And driving past mountain lakes
And driving through gray
Summer rains
And singing songs
A cappella from inside
The van and Summit
Just looked at her with his
Big brown eyes.
And on Sundays she usually
Climbed a tree
Or hung her feet off a rock
Or hiked through the rain
Getting wet and muddy
And rarely seeing
Another human face.
Finding temporary refuge
In a small town in Alaska
With mostly natives
And a few whites
She bought jade for her trade.
There she went hunting
For salmonberries and chanterelle,
Dandelion and chickweed,
When she spotted a broad back
And brown hair
Hunched over
Sitting on a rock
Which had a blue bike
Leaning against it.
Summit barked and ran
In that direction
And the man with the brown beard
And tan nose
Turned away from his book
Toward her
And beamed.
Their travels didn't last much longer;
Neither did their loneliness.
He build a small home out of cedar
In a forest of spruce
Next to a mossy creek
Where Summit could roam
And he carried her over the threshhold
And for fifty more years
He played his guitar
And they went out under the stars
And sang in harmony
Her in her husky alto,
Him with his sweet baritone,
Laughing and reading poetry.
After all this,
She blinked again
and turned her eyes
With dark circles underneath
Away from the window
And back to the florescent cubicle
To make another buck.
God bless.
