Untitled Road Trip Poem

Dust clouds lift in the distance,

Gray and solid,

Larger than imagination,

Now no larger than my fist.
Or is it a mountain?
Mountains?

Fingers and knuckles,

A ball of veins and flesh,

And bone.

It’s the days I’m counting,

And the miles,

Consumed in the small dust plumes

Stirred into tiny existence

By the heavy padded feet

Of the red elephant beneath me.

She is my home,

Ever-moving.

Her neck my balcony,

Her long under priced tusks my lawn,

Her haunch my pillow.

There is always dust in the distance,

Always something I cannot see through,

Or around,

Or even understand sometimes.

And the ending eludes me,

Frightens me more than death.

Well, perhaps that’s a lie,

Though I have my doubts.

Still it’s hazy in the cloud.

It settles so slowly

There’s a chance you’ll miss its presence all together.

Expecting to see your eyes adjust

Only to look up and see that they’ve adjusted.

The meaning:

There are no words for the meaning.

The feelings go undescribed.

The emotions are left untouched, unspoken.

Chance to die?

I’ve lost count of the sunrises,

They were all too far in the distance anyway,

Too covered in dust,

Their glory stolen by conceited mountains.

Their illusions of the future,

Their ever onward call,

Their knowledge of what’s beyond the cloud

Has always alarmed me.

2005

.