65 North
Because I was driving, not flying, I passed Home of the Best Gummy Bears in the World, and I entered briefly the bright theater of childhood, then returned once again to these fields, flat and frosted. Hours of this. Maybe a shack, weather-worn outbuildings, plazas for fueling and feeding, bare trees and two blank billboards so I wondered what anyone could possibly say. A windowless building set far back on tar, cut off like a prison. Because I was driving, not flying, I thought of the nameless the lonely the trapped for whom life was just more long highway. I thought of the ones who might never know even this crossing of flatlands. Who might never get out, who might never arrive at this dropping of late-day sun—inside towers and brick, rust cylinders and grids, box cars, machinery and trucks. Who might never believe what can only be mercy—that even the grayest cement stands to glow.
Marilyn Annucci
