I didn't see a thread like this here... thought it might be nice to have one! Written anything lately that you'd like to share? My latest...

The Big Cross-Country

Funny how the landscape changes so slowly
you don’t really see.
One instant you’re driving through the delta,
flat and hot and familiar as your mother’s voice,
then dashed white lines stream past awhile
and you look up to find windmills
flailing arms like clumsy giants,
corn long-tasseled like a thousand Rapunzels
on vast swooping swells of well-turned earth,
suddenly knowing you're far from home.

The road takes so much of your attention
it's hard to notice each new change around you,
the occasional oak or cedar, the new colors
of tiny bright flowers whose names you don't know,
slowly growing in number until the corn that came before
is but a memory. Now kudzu creeps over the trees,
making shapes like clouds (look mom-- a giraffe,
no a dragon!) and the highway turns and stretches,
flowing over foothills, so different from the roads
you've left behind. And there's construction traffic,
barrels striped like prison clothes,
then a storm that turns your knuckles white on the wheel,
sends your mind running to long-forgotten gods
with prayers for safe passage,
and by the time you've come through it you're well and truly
in the mountains. Jutting stone and
mist like smoke and every glance out the window
a study in dark beauty,
awesome in its enormity.

It isn't that you don't know the changes will come --
of course they will, they must --
mountain isn't desert isn't sea.
Yet still it surprises you
when suddenly the road is flat again,
land empty of all but sagebrush
from one horizon to the next, desolate.
Sometimes it's hard not to miss the prettier roads,
the lovely corn, the ooh! ah! mountains.
The sandy ground burns your feet at the rest stop,
land barren all around.
You know the sea is worth the drive, though,
and you've come too far to turn back
so you get back in and keep going, legs stuck to the seat
and a/c on high and hoping you can make it the rest of the way,
wondering if you were wrong to take this route
after all.

Again as always it creeps up on you,
sagebrush slowly giving way
to stately pine processionals, standing at attention in sandy soil
to make way for your passage, salt in the breeze, and soon
gulls crying their welcome, crashing surf making you laugh
with surprise and delight as you catch that first glimpse through the dunes.
Tumbling eagerly onto the beach from the hot car,
towel in hand and wind in hair,
you stand for a moment suddenly overcome,
so glad you made the trip,
humbled and amazed by the vast
and beautiful sea.

Done traveling,
now we stroll green grounds,
among the stately stonework
and cobblestone paths,
so welcoming to busy squirrels and bright-winged fledgelings.
Many trips up many stairs with many boxes,
then the whirlwind as expected:
relocation registration convocation
and it's time to say goodbye.
I hug you once
twice
"I proud of you!" I say
then walk away across a campus blurred,
landscape forever changed.

--(hcm)