Blue Beacon Truck Wash: West Memphis, Arkansas

God is Everywhere

JD

Interstate

To swerve is to miss
To miss to long for:
A receding highway light
In the middle of the country
Through the center of the night.

How distance beckons and turns away.

This starry billboard rises
Along the road, through every county
It chances one may go.

To miss is to fail
To reach or contact. The tire
Misses the road. In the general vagueness

In the general night, the rest stops
Blink and sigh over cup and saucer
Above the glum Formica –
The accidental faces.

The windows mirror the way.

A stretch of darkness, like longing’s light
How far I must have traveled
When you rise up quickly, surely
It’s always the center of the road
And I swerve and miss you, miss you.

AJA

originally published in Pebble Lake Review, September 2005