It was always too early in the morning when I packed
my father’s old Jeep and stumbled through remembered
directions to the back roads out of that sleepy town.
Along the highway’s shoulders, the corn had grown
brown as the fenders of the old moss brown Willis
but there was forest beyond. Soon my small son, asleep
beside me, was curled for the journey like a hound
against the chilly December air. The town’s roads were sand
still and the tires sighed like wind as we pulled away.
Highway Nine was our first landmark, a flat state road way
out past the Johnson place, near where my wife was born
(I didn’t tell you she’s from the town) and the intersection,
slowed mea blinking yellow light-- enough to slowly tilt
my coffee from my dark cup, draining it to the silt.

The journey was noisy, the valves on my father’s jeep shot
by 200,000 miles on back roads and no metal spot
where the wear had not seared wrinkles. Oh, the lifters moaned,
tired from so much travel. I digress about the jeep, but owned
nothing I cherish more. As I left town I always hoped I play
my last hours out on this worn-through straw seat cover, pray
still my son can sit there too. He’d wake near old Grand
Junction. We’d eat breakfast near there. It wasn’t a sound
that got him sitting up. It was the sure memory of syrup
and pancakes, and the coffee smell from his father’s old cup.
I love his mother but not like I love him. It’s that clean
fatherly love. Like I love the jeep, the journey, the cans
of beans in the back for emergencies, a sleeping bag, old
as the journey itself. We left always when my son was finished.

Maybe for him the journey was the pancakes, the sleep
beside his old man, but for me it was the slow retreat
into memory that kept me to the mile markers and crossings
between here and there. No one waited for us, no parties
at grandmother’s house (no grandmother even) and nothing
to do but turn around, eat lunch at Parker’s, and heading

out, swing one last time by the old collapsing home place.
That was the point of all that driving. To see it still there.
He didn’t like Parker’s much, always asked to eat this time
at Burger King. Someday I’ll let him, when he’s driving me.
We were almost there. He be back asleep, though the sun
was up above the window seal. My son. My father’s son.