afieldnotebook

Driving in Oklahoma

On humming rubber along this white concrete,
lighthearted between the gravities
of source and destination like a man
halfway to the moon
in this bubble of tuneless whistling
at seventy miles an hour from the windvents,
over prairie swells rising
and falling, over the quick offramp
that drops to its underpass and the truck
thundering beneath as I cross
with the country music twanging out my windows,
I'm grooving down this highway feeling
technology is freedom's other name when
—a meadowlark
comes sailing across my windshield
with breast shining yellow
and five notes pierce
the windroar like a flash
of nectar on mind,
gone as the country music swells up and drops
-------------------------------me wheeling down
----------------------my notch of cement-bottomed sky
-----------------------------between home and away
and wanting
to move again through country that a bird
has defined wholly with song,
and maybe next time see how
-------------------------he flies so easy, when he sings.

-Carter Revard, 2005