The Universe and Me and You

I’ve been driving a lot

An awful lot

Three thousand miles and such

And for the first time in three months, I’m carsick like homesickness 

But you can call it whatever you want

I’ve done a lot of driving this past weekend

Six hundred miles and such through desert columns that fell from the ocean

Cresting the last mountain as the deep brown hills disperse into flat fields in the rearview

Our memories of the view disappear as we do 

I drive three hours into what I’ve known my whole life 

And whoever made this place was a cruel architect like a cynic with no hands

Who knew what beauty could be removed from you so fast

As if a stranger dropped out of the blue with a hat full of my cash

Farmland, dairy cows, marshland, and turbines that don't spin

As if the wildfires in the mountains of Westlakes laid a thick haze like erasure for my modest brain

And now I'm just sick again

A sick that is good in the heart but bad in the head

Home traveled all this way like a disease only to catch me on the way back

The music of only base sweeps the stationary scene as if God is in the radio catching me how he tends to 

Hours pass like landmarks we’ve seen before because this is the route we detoured

Construction and its odor helped my olfactory bulb remember

The construction is endless and the lights on their signs flicker out of order

We wait for hours just to get closer to the home we’d never even forgotten 

But God is a bastard and he knows us better

He knows we forgot it

So waiting is what we do

Static without leisure posited between cars with a quarry on either side  

My eyes slide back because I promise I can remember it

I'm only sitting in traffic

Remembering

I'm only sitting and waiting

And I remember all the wrong things 

Just ten minutes ago I was sitting in traffic 

Just an hour ago I saw a planet that looked vaguely familiar 

Just yesterday I spotted a stonewall of a tree besting a mountain ridge

Just last week I laid flat in a smoking mist from the right half of the burning sawtooth arches

Just last week I climbed a mountain to sink my toes into an alpine lake out of wind

Just last month I walked through a dismantled settlement in the cascades

Not so long ago I could’ve been found sprawled in a dune abutting the Pacific like a seastar 

And walking the harbor like lovers, stomachs full of whisky and gin

Just last month I had everything

Now sober accidentally dreaming again, I found that just a short time ago

My dreams walked right out into the ocean and I didn't even recognize them

Now I'm here again painfully low on gas running in place pinching at my skin

As if by chance I could breathe air salty again

But I freed a goldfish into the ocean and I'm not that innocent, I know I'll have to buy a new one

I sit here dreading what comes next; the walk-through, the land of the living where I once grew a man

Through and through

Through

And through

And Through 

And again

We know this place well, and more so as a wish in the waiting well

Through and through where we once were children

Leant against fire hydrants drinking Fanta, and country roads splitting the forest at the end of the cul-de-sac 

Spinning telephone wires tangled in the trees

 And the grass and pine needles that put a floor to the plastic overpass we drank beers under 

Lakes like if we don't make it we’ll get the next one 

Blue but not so blue as the last one

Plentiful of fish and marrow but not quite the ocean

The seashells, well shells, they smell like nothing 

I miss the purest air I ever breathed in

The air that felt like sinning

Up and surrounded by mountains snow stained and anonymous to the layman

But this

This is also good

I never felt this when I lived here

Now I live nowhere

I don't like that, but I cherish that

A tourist of solace

A tourist of every place a loved one has laid to earth a tiny monolith

I don't know where my paychecks get sent to

I’ve no clue

And I don't mind it, my address is a symbol of my lineage

Don't get me wrong

I am wrong but don't get me, please

This is the home that feels like a sweet symphony played in the backstreets

I smell like pigeon feet in the ministry dancing to God and I'm starting to sound relieved

I think I might be because the universe as my god finally sees me for what we are

Caribou chasing monarchs until the grass behind us is all that suffers 

How complex can you be for me not to believe in your guiding me

You’re the embryo that I only let grow with me because we’re human, aren't we?

I see you in the treetops sending birds to sing familiar tunes

With ash on their feathers falling back to the canopy squeezed tight by mountains erupting 

Pointing to the exit that pleads, please, God, for the sake of me please am I only a fading memory?

I'm only a highway that eventually leads to nothing

Nothing 

You’re as clever as the place that shooed me back east

You lead alright

Lead to a backstreet with a ground flat enough for me to see you pissing in the alley

And I'll join you probably 

Not for nothing

I think I'm relieved most to know we never truly leave anything

Pieces of us fray with every step we take and I think it better that I leave a trail that spans a long ways

The energy we trade, I’d like to influence you in the ways you do me

In exchange, I’d allow you all of me and my matter for safekeeping  

I think you know the feeling

Even if you don't, you do

I’m afraid to be as comfortable as I am now

Because the construction ended about a mile back

And I think that means we have another forty miles before the next

Universe, you’re as clever as the person I’ve given my heart to

And I thank you for that.