Wanderlust

The American frontier lost its flavor years ago,
but you keep traveling farther west, our conversations
stilted by mountain ranges, the radio's endless
spin of Willie & Waylon tunes. The ride home

is a long one, and during it you read the landscape
for signs of this discernible hymn: we may not endure.
Newspaper headlines curling to dust,
rolling from one coast to the other, beyond

booze bottles hurled into ditches, the glow
of your Marlboros smoked two at a time. What is there
to say above the din of the desert ? That time once felt
like something you could hold in your hands, when it was

cold enough to watch your breath rise and move
through the air, ahead of the next adventure? Are you still
following that line--toward an end with some unsolvable
longing? Send word as soon as you arrive.