A Child’s Memory of Long Car Rides 

After Joyce Polance’s “Morning Route”

Before we learned to lean our heads 
Softly on humming glass and hope
It would be cool in summer, warm in winter
Still it lulled us into the gentle throes of sleep

When neither leather nor pleather
Cigarette-burned plastic nor stained cloth
Embraced us in a backward-facing seat
American Dream pillow and blanket

Our fingers raced alongside the window
They leapt simian from tree-to-tree
Slid along powerlines and guard rails
Even our imagination could not keep up

Yes, sometimes, there were games
And sometimes, there was music
Our father’s off-key voice crooning
Our mother reading every billboard
 
But mostly there was the silence
Broken only by the fallen leaf hum 
Of an engine we did not then understand
An orchestra only our father knew

His hands the wheel, his feet the pedals
Every tick, clunk, and grind clutched in his jaw
In the rearview mirror, he saw us sleeping
And he prayed we did not break down

All he wanted was that nothing taint this
This memory we did not yet know 
We would hold dear when we too, someday
Drove down these long and lonely roads

No, what we mostly remembered were how
Pines became water oaks and sweet gums
Oaks became wisteria and dogwoods
Dogwoods became maple and beech

An East Coast brochure flipbook lullaby
Green and brown, red and gold, black and white
We could have become an oil painting
If only we could keep our eyes open

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CS Crowe is three crows in a trench coat that gained sentience after eating a magic bean. He spends his days writing stories on a stolen laptop and trading human teeth for peanuts. A poet and storyteller from the Southeastern United States, he believes stories and poems are about the journey, not the destination, and he loves those stories that wander in the wilderness for forty years before finding their way to the promised land.