Procession of Taillights as I Neared Bentonville

April 29, 2022 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

I drove the Ozarks
along the old Telegraph Road.

The telegraph poles
were replaced by telephone poles.

I am not sure of the difference
but there must be one.

It’s path was laid over the path
Native Americans used to take.

They followed the buffalo
who made the original path.

I followed the route south
by Curtis’s troops during the Civil War.

I wished to see
if the land repaired itself

after two long days
of so much dismemberment

at the hands of men
wielding black powder weapons.

Split Suitcase Littered Clothes

August 30, 2021August 30, 2021 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

No one tabulates
the death
our highways score
or counts
the blood droplets
as plasma evaporates
crusting rusty
hemoglobin
on the asphalt.

Even that
relatively empty
stretch of I-25
from Raton
to Las Vegas
New Mexico
produces enough
red blotches
to cause a soul
to consider
the highway
has acne
and no Clearasil
or other cure
to un-blemish
a surface.

If you doze
near Wagon Mound
and your car
spits gravel
going into
the soft shoulder
and then flip-flops
end over end
gravity eventually eliminates
momentum’s force.
It may be hours
before anyone notices
the absence
of your vehicle
from the road
until the crows
or turkey vultures
begin to circle.

Why I Have A List Of Favorite Rest Stops

July 4, 2021 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Sadness persists in me.
Like it is an uncharted organ.

Bicycling does much to diminish it.
Photo albums tend to intensify it.

Blueberries on my morning yogurt
signify I have a taste for blueberries.

There are days sadness
pulls me deeper inside myself.

Other days it pushes me
outside my skin.

Drinking shrinks it briefly
then expands it to galactic dimensions.

As sad experiences add up
I do my best to relabel them neutrally.

There is something about driving long distances
that vibrates sadness out of my pores

to steadily drip on the pavement
of the interstate highways I traverse.

I once tried the nomad lifestyle
because of this fact

but ran out of novel roads to drive
at Neah Bay with a view of Waadah Island.

I threw nine amens and hale-Mary’d
my St. Christopher medallion into the ocean

where the Strait of Juan de Fuca meets the sea
trusting that would pacify my sadness.

It did not. My sadness suggested
we head back to Albuquerque

and the surrounding desert
since the green chile harvest started that week.

There Now

November 15, 2020 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Twenty-seven years gone
but my dog is young again
riding shotgun in the car
with her nose pressed
to the crack in the window.

Speed generated wind
brings her a thousand stories
as the great plains
rise gently toward the Rockies
and the forest trails we once walked.

For old times sake
I pull off the highway
for a quarter pounder
and buy her a cheeseburger
that she’ll consume in one bite.

Eventually I park the car
at a trailhead on the Spanish Peaks.
Even her golden ghost refuses
to jump out the open door and walk
the trail up to where the thunder gods hangout.

House Divided

August 18, 2019 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

My driver’s name is my name.
Chauffeur and passenger simultaneously.
Sometimes while in conversation with myself,
I become misplaced on a highway
that is not my destination’s highway.
Somedays, the highways know best
where I am truly headed.

On those somedays, I ask myself
Where are we headed?
I never know, but I trust the highway
like it is a black asphalt angel.
In the upper midwest, it is a grey concrete angel.
In the desert southwest, it can be a red clay angel.

In April, the highway took me
all the way to Appomattox, Virginia.
I guess I needed a beginning to an end.
Reasonable terms for the cessation of hostilities.
The highway just informed me
it is time for me to end my divided war.