Highway Story

We load the car and we get on our
way to that other landscape. The sea is
stalling. The light blue is masking
the whale washed up on the shore.
The kids are into that. Then more driving
into oblivion. More Stuckey's pralines,
more car identification, more memory
tricks running through the alphabet
with something for every letter-
can you remember the list from a to z?
A bright blue animal built
of puffs of air. Chemical blue hair,
then the candy lions and the mope
around ones with the sad tails-
they are in our highway story.
A rolled car just once and some
mashed brain story and some incident
with a cop story about speeding.
Then a motel and cigar box full of shells,
then sunburn, then jellyfish, then sleep.