as I travel this perfect
ribbon of highway
connecting two rather ordinary cities,

the cumulus tilts long-ways across the road
suddenly forming an imaginary mountain range
here among the cornfields
complete with a crystalline lake
and there, I can barely glimpse
the passage through to the Pacific.

I wonder what pulled them,
the first ones here,
what invisible gossamer
when after a clearing,
there was nothing but another forest
and another unnamed lake.

when the weary man,
after ten days travel
with two horses, his wife of three years,
his first-born son and Sally, their dog,
hesitated a moment,

and early in the morning
thought about swimming
far out into the deep black water
to drown.