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.
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by Carter Revard, 2005
