Bedouin..

More true road stories...

Poetry is the sound of unforced silence, the sound of my daughter laughing, the sound of rain hitting the car roof in the dead of night on some back road in Nowhere America with a headfull of cheap bourbon and a foolproof escape plan, it is the lonely sound of a distant train whistle heard from the middle of an Indiana cornfield where for just one brief fleeting moment you can imagine hopping that train and riding that m**********r into the night and never looking back...Just ride ride RIDE that iron horse to the end of infinity...then keep on riding...It`s the sound of the barges and shrimp boats on the lower Mississippi going out at the break of dawn with the seagulls in tow as you spend your last dollar on a s****y cup of coffee while you ponder the futility of your next destination...just sitting on the bank watching that muddy water just roll on by like the years of your life before it...ever onward towards the silent sea of obscurity...It is the sound of the foghorn from your cliffside promontory in the early morning fog before humanity awakens and rrips your very own private world asunder...It is thunder and fireflies in a twilight field...the smell of ozone sharp in the air...but only in solitude...it is stumbling into a Waco Texas bus station at 4 AM out of the driving rain...and taking apart your nightmares and leaving them by the door...the knowing looks from the other lost souls of the night...the wordless eye contact...the recognition as birds of a feather...It is driving an eighteen wheeler through the wastelands of northern Wyoming and seeing the endless miles of emptiness stretch out before you like your life without beginning or end...just empty space and empty heart as far as the eye can see and the soul can feel...nothing but rubber meeting road and the sound of the gospel radio station bringing the good word...the sporadic, disembodied voices over the CB radio from other gypsies of the road desperately seeking contact from the void...pleading for any response to latch onto like a final lifeline...a validation that they are still there...that they haven`t driven off into the ether...It is being on the run in the high desert of the Mojave and coming upon an abandoned gas station where you might rest your road weary bones for the night...and laying down in the cool sand watching the stars hurtling themselves earthward and recalling the faces of loved ones forever lost...and waking in the dawn with a coyote curled up by you...attracted in the night by the beacon of your lonliness broadcasting out into the desert night while you slept...and you both reluctantly climbing back to wakefulness...and the coyote standing and stretching and wandering off back into the yucca and joshua trees from whence it came taking a large piece of your heart with him as payment for the brief anonymous companionship...
 on the road again....