Routes
before a business trip,
I find four year old Lea’s
traveled Nevada
with a pine green crayon.
Bold, indelible curlycues
now ring Reno and Carson City,
then loop southeast to Vegas,
where once, years ago,
a longsincelost cousin of mine,
seventeen and pregnant,
wed a blackjack dealer.
Just yesterday, my first child,
my only daughter, puzzled
above a baloney sandwich,
deciding whether to marry
Brandon, the neighbor boy,
or Jason, a playmate at daycare.
“Brandon,” she then asserted,
“Most definitely Brandon.”
I linger a moment in Nevada,
follow her green path as it twists,
wanders through the Proving Grounds,
scrambles north along I-93
toward the Idaho line,
so quick, so curvy, so unstoppably green
I’m still not exactly sure
what route she’s taking.
First
published