Asphalt Buzz

Highway 80
High-way ‘70
Ground up tar
Rumbling car
Rubber wheel
Rubber sole
Friction
Fusion
Fraction of a second
past the dawdling armadillo.

Rough but untouched by fingertips
Only thumbs
Feel the pattern change
in the music that the churning grooves make,
the hum under full bladders.
Repercussions of its vastness.

Feel hot, smell hot
Taste the warmed bottled water
wash over the ridges on her tongue.
Chips
Chocolate
Hot celery-smell
followed all the way home.

Comfortable music is:
Loud, blasting
Soft or dull
lullaby
She thinks she sounds horrible
College graduate, but
she doesn’t know a thing.

It looks like:
compressed ashes
My grandfather’s urn.
Thousands of them packed densely dense
for wheels—
Four wheels—
rotate and turn over
take you somewhere.

Anywhere:
Denver
Saint Louis
Homosassa
New Orleans
Everywhere:
ant-shaped rocks
all united, not untied
Like her head and mine
Like her curls
My tangles.

We rode that L-shaped road
ruthlessly.
Fearless. On a conquest for
maybe something
maybe nothing,
Maybe just pebbles hopping out of the way
of her humming, humbling wheels.
Henrietta.

Alternative Life Style:
Lesbians, or
Sisters, or
just close friends
Strong women traveling
Thoughts unraveling
then braiding together
Marine Biologist
and writer
In sync
In cylinder
In sequence
Synonymous.

To count the members
of the Tiny Road-Pebble Club:
an eternity
The bird with grains of sand—
Sunday School image of life after death.
God talks during nature walks
Ladies laidback
Hash Haystacks
Haystack haystacks.
Feel that rumbling
vibrating
freeing
Hum.

Highway ten
go back again
Not a single cold stone in Texas. A
High-altitude
hike is doctor-recommended.
Seven thousand miles
and sparkling
Golden-Tan.
Bittersweet:
smell-taste-feel-look
Always, sound is:
lullaby.